Scott Ellaway, Artistic Director
Rated by BBC Music Magazine as one of the UK's Top Ten emerging talent, Welsh-born entrepreneurial music director Scott Ellaway is steadily carving a career as one of the twentyfirst century's most innovative conductors. A scholar and graduate of the University of Oxford, Ellaway has studied with some of the world's leading pedagogues, including Claudio Abbado, Michael Tilson Thomas, Vernon Handley, and Jorma Panula, and is already taking his place as an educator of future musical generations through his pioneering educational work.
Ellaway made his professional debut at the age of twenty-one with members of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Welsh National Opera while still an undergraduate at Oxford. He has since worked with a number of leading orchestras and ensembles, both in the UK and further afield, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, then the youngest British-born conductor to lead the orchestra since Sir Simon Rattle, the Academy of Ancient Music, Berliner Symphoniker, the London Mozart Players, the Heidelberger Frühling Festival Orchestra at the invitation of Matthias Pintscher, the London Symphony Orchestra, and performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City for the first time in 2014, conducting performances of George Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, Kammermusik No. 2 and Who Cares? for the New York City Ballet. Ellaway has worked with a number of internationally renowned artists including the BBC Singers, Iestyn Davies, Gautier Capuçon, Alexander Melnikov, James Bowman and Nicola Benedetti whose concert from the Cheltenham Festival was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Ellaway has featured regularly in the media, making several contributions to Classic FM's podcast series and was recently featured in a documentary by Deutsche Welle TV.
Orchestra Europa swooned and swerved under the direction of Scott Ellaway.
— Geoff Brown, The Times
In the Summer of 2006 Ellaway, working with composer Robert Saxton and other members of the University of Oxford, founded Europa, a unique educational charity devoted to fostering an enthusiasm in classical music, with an orchestral emphasis, in young people of all ages. Using high-profile concerts with artists of repute as its focal points, Europa grew rapidly under Ellaway's leadership into a substantial organisation benefitting several hundred young people each year and working with a variety of schools, community groups and other artistic organisations. His pioneering work has been met with international acclaim in publications including BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone Magazine, Music Teacher Magazine, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph, giving Ellaway a unique profile not only as a successful conductor but also as an inspirer of generations of musicians despite his young age.
Deeply committed to music education, Ellaway continues to work closely with a number of international organisations, including Europa and local and national government groups in furthering this cause, alongside his active performance schedule. Ellaway launched OpusYou, a global music education resource, that has become a world leader in the field of music education.
