Conductor Harry Christophers is known internationally as the founder and director of the Sixteen. Earning accolades and awards for recordings with that group and the Handel and Haydn Society, Christophers has also taken up the baton at opera houses and festivals in Europe. With the Sixteen, he established the Coro label in 2001, and has issued more than 150 recordings since.
Christophers was born on December 26, 1953, in Goudhurst, Kent, England. He was educated at the Canterbury Cathedral Choir School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He founded the Sixteen and its accompanying instrumental ensemble in 1977. Christophers' emphasis with the Sixteen is in the performance of early English polyphony, but also in a varied repertoire from the Renaissance to contemporary composers. He has led the Sixteen on tours throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Asia. To perform music for choir and orchestra, Christophers founded the Symphony of Harmony & Invention. In 2000, in celebration of the new millennium, Christophers and the Sixteen embarked on what has become an annual tradition with a "Choral Pilgrimage," giving performances at cathedrals throughout England.
Along with his duties with the Sixteen, Christophers has performed as a guest conductor with orchestras such as the English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and the St. Louis Symphony. As an operatic conductor, his repertoire includes Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse, Gluck's Orfeo, and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. In his 2000 debut with the English National Opera, he conducted Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea. He makes regular appearances with the English National Opera and the Lisbon Opera. In 2009, Christophers expanded his workload when he became the artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest continuously performing musical ensemble in the U.S. In that capacity, he oversaw the transformation of a venerable but conservative American community organization into a state-of-the-art historical performance group, releasing new recordings of such standard Handel and Haydn repertory as Haydn's The Creation (2013).
Christophers and the Sixteen have continued issuing albums at a breakneck pace, with dozens of recordings appearing from 2010 to well into the 2020s. In addition to conducting, Christophers contributes a short note explaining his attraction to the music and his reasons for wanting to record it. He has generally stuck to his core Baroque and Renaissance repertory but has also ventured forward to Mozart and as far as contemporary music. English audiences, especially, have responded to Christophers' direct, personable approach, and his albums have earned heavy airplay on the radio as well as strong sales. The Sixteen's recordings, as well as those of the Handel & Haydn Society, have appeared on Coro since the label was established by Christophers and the Sixteen. To celebrate the group's 40th anniversary in 2019, Christophers and the Sixteen released 40, a compilation of recordings from throughout their history. The following year, Christophers and the Sixteen celebrated the 20th anniversary of the "Choral Pilgrimage" with The Call to Rome, with the program continuing as of 2024.
Christophers' recordings have been awarded Grand Prix du Disque honors, Deutsche Schallplatten prizes, Diapason d'Or awards, and the 1992 Gramophone Early Music Award (for the first of the five-volume series Music from the Eton Choirbook). In 2012, Christophers was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire. ~ TiVo Staff, Rovi
