Robert King (conductor)

Career

As a youth, he was a member of the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge. He read music at St John's College of the University of Cambridge, and in 1980, while still a student, founded the period instrument orchestra The King's Consort. As conductor and artistic director of The King's Consort, King has made more than 100 recordings, mostly for Hyperion Records and Vivat.

He has worked as a conductor with orchestras in Europe and North America, including the Seattle, Houston, New World, Oregon, Detroit, Atlanta, Minnesota, WDR and NDR Symphony Orchestras, the Bergen Philharmonic, the Munich Radio Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Danish National Radio Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, the Orchestra della RAI Torino, Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona, Real Filharmonia de Galicia, Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla and the Orquesta e Coro Ciudad de Madrid. As a choral conductor, King has worked with the Nederlands Kamerkoor, Orfeo Catala, Orfeón Donostiarra, Swiss Radio Choir and the BBC Singers. Operatic work has included Handel Ottone in Japan and the UK, Handel Ezio in Paris, Purcell The Indian Queen in the UK and Germany, Purcell The Fairy Queen in Spain and Britain and Gluck Armide for Buxton Festival. He has written and presented for the BBC, been artistic director of music festivals in Sweden, Germany, and the UK, and contributed to the scores of a number of Hollywood films including Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek 2, Flushed Away, and The Da Vinci Code.

Besides his work in the field of baroque music, King has conducted a wide spread of classical and early romantic works, symphonic and choral, with a particular focus on the music of Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn, and a continuing specialisation in early twentieth century English composers, notably the works of Vaughan Williams, Stanford and Parry.

Following a custodial sentence in 2007 for previous indecent assaults, King made a return to the podium in 2009. Having recorded mostly for Hyperion Records prior to his conviction, since 2013 he has recorded for Vivat, for which his debut recording, I Was Glad, reached number 1 in the UK Specialist Classical Albums Chart and was a finalist in the 2013 Gramophone Awards.

A published author and editor of many scores, principally of baroque music, King wrote a monograph on Purcell published in 1995, to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the composer’s death in 1695. In 2010 and 2011, two volumes of English church music edited by King were published by Oxford University Press joining nearly 100 other works he has edited from the Baroque and Classical eras.

Indecent assault convictions

In 2007, King was convicted of fourteen charges of indecent assault for the sexual assault of five boys, three under the age of sixteen, between 1982 and 1995; he was acquitted on another charge. King was jailed for a sentence of three years and nine months and was placed on the sex offenders' register for life. During the case, King denied the abuse, describing the boys as "absolute liars".

Following his sentence, King was not prohibited from working with children. In 2013, commenting after criticism for his taking part in a charity fundraising concert, King stated that he had ‘accepted my sentence, and have paid my debt to society’.

Published works

Discography

Founded in 1980 by Robert King, the period instrument orchestra and choir The King’s Consort has made more than one hundred recordings under King’s direction, winning many international awards and selling more than 1,500,000 copies.