James Savage-Hanford
James enjoys a varied career as a singer, conductor, and musicologist. He read Music at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and studied for a Masters and PhD in Musicology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Prior to doctoral study, he also undertook postgraduate training in vocal performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
As an ensemble singer, James has performed throughout the UK and across Europe with renowned groups such as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Armonico Consort, the BBC Singers, the English Concert, the Hanover Band, and Sonoro, and in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Hall, St John's Smith Square, Saffron Hall, the Aldeburgh Festival, the St Magnus Festival Kirkwall, the St Gallen Festival Switzerland, NOSPR Katowice, and the Philharmonie Essen.
As a concert soloist, James has performed much of the standard oratorio repertoire. Highlights include a performance of Mozart's Requiem with the Brandenburg Sinfonia at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London; a programme of works by Monteverdi (including excerpts from the 1610 Vespers) and his contemporaries alongside the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble at Lancaster Priory; and Haydn's The Creation at Southwell Minster. On the operatic stage, he made his international debut as Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra at the Birgitta Festival, Tallinn.
Increasingly in demand as a musical director, James has conducted Ralph Vaughan Williams' Riders to the Sea (in his own piano trio arrangement) and Lennox Berkeley's A Dinner Engagement in a double bill performance for Bute Park Opera, and has assisted on projects for the Cardiff-based Early Music ensemble Sforza, including as Chorus Master for a concert performance of Handel's Semele. He is a former MD of the Coleridge Choir (now fully amalgamated as part of Cambridgeshire Choral Society) and has worked with numerous youth and adult community choirs throughout Hertfordshire.
James was appointed MD of Vocalis in September 2024 and also directs the Overgate Hospice Choir in Halifax and Cantores Olicanae in Ilkley,.
For more information, visit James’s website www.jamessavagehanford.com.
