Michael Bawtree

Biography

Michael Bawtree studied music at Cambridge University and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. For five years he was Assistant Director of Music at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in
Suffolk. He moved to Scotland in 2004 to take up a two-year postgraduate conducting scholarship at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 2006 he was awarded his Master of Music degree with distinction.

Michael Bawtree is Chorus Director of the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union, Music Director of Glasgow Chamber Choir and assistant music director of the Lyrique-en-Mer Festival, Belle Ile, France. He has worked for Scottish Ballet for four seasons, as assistant conductor for Cinderella (2007), returning to the company for Romeo and Juliet (2008) and conducting performances across the United Kingdom of Sleeping Beauty (2008 & 2009). He conducted Nutcracker for the company in 2009/10. Michael has conducted the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has worked with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, the RSNO chorus, the Bury St Edmunds Festival Chorus and the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir. Increasingly involved in opera, Michael has worked on productions of Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Don Paquale in France, and Falstaff, Cendrillon and Flight at the RSAMD (Now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). He conducted Albert Herring and La Clemenza di Tito for Edinburgh Studio Opera and in 2006 premiered Gareth Williams’ one-act opera, Love in the Blue Corner.

As an organist, Michael has given recitals in twenty British cathedrals, across the United States, and in Bermuda, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzlerland. He regularly plays organ and orchestral keyboard for the RSNO and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and was recently soloists in Saint-Saens’ Organ Symphony with the RSNO at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum.