Born in England, the conductor Julia Jones is forging a highly successful career in
Europe, where she regularly appears at some of the most respected opera houses,
including the State Operas of Vienna and Berlin. In addition, she conducts
numerous concerts and has on-going relationships with many European
orchestras. She has received enthusiastic acclaim from critics and press for her
decisive style of music-making, which cultivates a living, breathing
texture of exceptional clarity while bristling with energy.
Among her most recent successes are appearances with the Bavarian State Opera,
the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Semperoper in Dresden, where
she was immediately re-invited for a new production, as well as concerts in
Lisbon and Bochum. In recent years she has worked with the Berlin State Opera,
Frankfurt Opera and the Vienna Volksoper. At the Vienna State Opera she has
conducted celebrated performances of Mozart?s Così fan Tutte and Die
Zauberflöte, while she has made impressive debuts at the Deutsche Oper Berlin
and the 2004 Salzburg Festival.
From 1991 -1995 she was Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater Ulm, conducting a
wide range of repertoire before moving to the Staatstheater Darmstadt
(1995-1997). In the 1997/98 season she went to Basel to conduct a new
production of Verdi?s Un Ballo in Maschera, which was such a success that she was immediately invited to become chief conductor of the Opera Basel from 1998 to 2002.
Her first engagement in Italy, Lohengrin at the Teatro Comunale di
Firenze in 1999, culminated in ecstatic reviews. After her performance of Verdis
Macbeth in the same house, Opera magazine wrote: Jones's direction was crisp
and precise with steep contrasts of dynamic which powered the drama
accordingly. Excellent, too, was her accompanying of the singers ... In a word, she
communicates.
Other significant European engagements include appearances at the Gran Teatre
del Liceu, Barcelona; Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa; Teatro Massimo, Palermo; Opéra
National du Rhin, Strasbourg and Grand Théâtre de Genève. Outside Europe she
has conducted opera in Melbourne, Sydney and Washington.
In the concert hall, Julia Jones has worked with a large number of orchestras
including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra,
Hamburg Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Portuguese National
Symphony, Gürzenich Orchester, Strasbourg Philharmonic and the Mozarteum
Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. She has particularly strong ties to the Bochumer
Symphoniker and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.