Acclaimed for his “passionate commitment to the composer and score...” “elegant sense of shape...” “perfected technique [and] a personal aesthetic vision,” Tim Ribchester is expanding an international presence as an inspiring, versatile musical leader, particularly in the field of baroque interpretation.
Mr. Ribchester has spent the past three seasons assisting, cover conducting, and playing continuo cembalo for some of the most distinguished living conductors and casts of singers in Vienna, Munich, and his home city of Berlin, where he is employed by both the Staatsoper Under den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin as a specialist vocal coach and regular guest with the houses’ orchestral ensembles. His regular collaboration with Sir Simon Rattle during this time culminated in a personal invitation to record the recitatives and orchestral cembalo continuo on Rattle’s forthcoming recording of Idomeneo with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. Other 2023 engagements have included 1st cembalo and cover conductor for Stefan Herheim’s new production of Theodora at Theater an der Wien at the invitation of Bejun Mehta; Director of Vocal Recitals and Audition Repertoire at the Trentino Music Festival; organ continuo for the St Matthew Passion under Alessandro De Marchi at Deutsche Oper Berlin; and invitations to perform with groups such as Staatskapelle Berlin, Camerata Salzburg, Il Concerto Virtuoso, La Folia Barockorchester, I Porporini, and festivals including Bachtage Rostock, Oranienburger Schlosskonzerte, and the Maifestspiele Wiesbaden.
In summer 2024 he was appointed Music Director of the Lyric Opera Studio Weimar, conducting six performances of Die Zauberflöte. 2022 included an Athens debut conducting the distinguished baroque orchestra Armonia Atenea, in an exclusive televised concert of arias for Parnassus Arts; leading the continuo for Staatskapelle Berlin’s Brandenburg Concertos cycle under András Schiff; the Goethe-Institut produced African premiere of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo at the Theater Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco; and extensive duties as cast coach and rehearsal/cover conductor for L’incoronazione di Poppea at Staatsoper Unter den Linden. He has assisted and prepared casts for Sir Simon Rattle and the Freiburger Barockorchester (Hippolyte et Aricie), the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin under Christophe Rousset, Christopher Moulds, and Jean-Christophe Spinosi (Orfeo ed Euridice, Dido and Aeneas, L’incoronazione di Poppea); Ottavio Dantone with Accademia Bizantina (Le Cinesi); and René Jacobs (Il Giustino).
At the Trentino Music Festival, Italy, Mr. Ribchester has conducted all of the baroque operatic and concert repertoire since 2015, including fully staged productions of Rinaldo, Alcina, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Dido and Aeneas in collaboration with stage directors David Gately and Greg Eldridge. His original orchestration of L’incoronazione di Poppea, for an orchestra of sixteen solo players based on study of the opera’s manuscripts and existing performing editions, was workshopped in Trentino in 2022, with three scenes live-streamed by Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center in April 2021, and a Neustart Kultur grant awarded by the Deutscher Musikrat to video scenes from the edition in December 2022. In Boston Mr. Ribchester has directed the music of composers Joseph Summer and Mary Bichner on operatic and chamber music premieres and recordings for Albany Records and Navona Records, including collaboration with the Ulysses Quartet, and for North Carolina Opera he has covered and assisted Tim Myers in productions of Das Rheingold and Eugene Onegin.
From 2018-2021 Mr. Ribchester served as Vocal Coach/Conductor in Residence at Cape Town Opera, South Africa, where in 2019 he led the Young Artist Program tour of Germany and directed a subscription concert of Handel’s Italian vocal duets. In 2021 he prepared the cast of Cape Town Opera’s Les pêcheurs de perles while continuing his mentorship of the company’s young artists. Formerly repetiteur at the Academy of Vocal Arts and Opera Philadelphia, he has conducted the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, Baltimore and Boulder Chamber Orchestras, the Academy of Vocal Arts Chorus, and Opera Philadelphia Chorus, as well as completing a two-season contract as Music Director of Delaware County Symphony (Pennsylvania) and frequently guest conducting for the city’s Concert Operetta Theater.
In addition to a private vocal coaching studio with many high-profile international clients, his Berlin portfolio includes the Berlin Philharmonic’s Children’s Concert program as pianist, as well as online masterclasses for organizations including the Premiere Opera Vocal Arts Institute and the Tanglewood Institute. His recital collaborators have included Julianne Baird, Helen Charlston, Ian Bostridge, Paquito D’Rivera, Pedro Giraudo, Johannes Held, and Ricardo Morales, and he is a featured soloist on the soundtrack of Park Chan-Wook’s critically acclaimed 2016 feature film The Handmaiden, and in duo with Cassia Harvey on the album The Russian Cello, as well as contributing song selections on Navona Records’ recent album “Who is Sylvia?”. He was invited by Save Venice, Inc. in 2022 to curate and perform a program of Venetian sacred music in the Basilica dei Frari for the 50th Anniversary Gala, celebrating the four-year restoration of Titian’s Assunta painting.
Mr. Ribchester trained at Oxford University, the Royal College of Music, London, La Schola Cantorum, Paris, and the Advanced Conducting Academy in Bacau, Romania, in addition to conducting master classes with several distinguished pedagogues in the United States and apprenticeships as assistant to Christofer Macatsoris and Christopher Larkin. Following intensive studies of tango performance practice in Buenos Aires he has led and collaborated on tango ensemble projects with the genre’s leading musicians on three continents, including his own arrangements of Piazzolla’s works.