Jonathan Nott

Who is Jonathan Nott?

Jonathan Nott is an English conductor, the son of a priest at Worcester Cathedral. He was a music student and choral scholar at the University of Cambridge, and also studied singing and flute in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music. Nott was also a conducting student in London. He left Britain to develop his conducting career in Germany via the traditional Kapellmeister system.

Nott made his conducting debut in 1988 at the Opera Festival in Battignano, Italy. In 1989, he was appointed Kapellmeister at the Frankfurt Opera. In 1991, he was appointed Erster Kapellmeister at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, and became interim chief conductor for the 1995–96 season. He later became music director at the Lucerne Theatre and served as principal conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 2002.

With the Berlin Philharmonic, Nott recorded several orchestral works of György Ligeti as part of the Teldec contribution to the complete recorded works of Ligeti. Nott became music director of the Ensemble InterContemporain in 2000. He relinquished this post in 2003, and immediately took up the position of principal guest conductor of the EIC.