Considered one of the pre-eminent interpreters of English orchestral music, British-born conductor James Judd has amassed an extensive collection of recordings on the Naxos label, including an unprecedented number in partnership with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, where he is Music Director Emeritus. Within a period of seven years as Music Director in New Zealand, he embarked on an unprecedented number of recordings with the orchestra for the Naxos label, including works by Copland, Bernstein, Vaughan Williams, Gershwin and many others. He has brought the orchestra to a new level of visibility and international acclaim through appearances at the 2000 Summer Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, the 2003 Auckland International Arts Festival, the Osaka Festival of International Orchestras as well as a specially televised Millennium Concert with Kiri Te Kanawa as soloist. He led the orchestra on its first ever tour of the major concert halls of Europe culminating with a début appearance at the BBC Proms in the summer of 2005.
His previous directorships include Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille in France and a groundbreaking fourteen years as Music Director of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. He continues to conduct regularly with all of the major British ensembles, including the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the English Chamber Orchestra. He was co-founder of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which he has led on tours throughout the United States, the Far East and Europe. In North and South America he is a frequent and much-admired guest conductor, having appeared with the orchestras of St. Louis, Montreal, Cincinnatti, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Utah, Vancouver and Ottawa.
A graduate of London's Trinity College of Music, James Judd came to international attention as the Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, a post he accepted at the invitation of Lorin Maazel. Four years later he returned to Europe after being appointed Associate Music Director of the European Community Youth Orchestra by Claudio Abbado, an ensemble with which he continues to serve as an honorary Artistic Director. Since that time he has directed the Berlin Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic, conducted in the great concert halls of Europe, including the Salzburg Mozarteum and Vienna's Musikverein, and made guest appearances with such prestigious ensembles as the Vienna Symphony, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, the Prague Symphony, Orchestre National de France, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Monte Carlo Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Flemish Radio Orchestra, and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg.
As an opera conductor, he has appeared with the English National Opera conducting productions of Il trovatore, La traviata, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto, and Le nozze di Figaro, and at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in Rossini's La Cenerentola.
