Roy Goodman is Principal Guest Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, 　　Director Emeritus of the European Union Baroque Orchestra, and Honorary President of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus. He has worked as guest conductor with over 120 orchestras & opera companies worldwide - from Carnegie Hall New York to the Royal Albert Hall Proms in London, and from Berlin Philharmonic Hall to the Sydney Opera House. 　　  　　In 2011 Radio New Zealand affectionately named him the 'Rafa Nadal' of conductors! 　　  　　Goodman is well-known for his work as Director and founder of the Brandenburg Consort (1975-2001), as co-director/founder of The Parley of Instruments (1978-1986), co-founder of the London Handel Orchestra (in 1981), Principal Conductor of the Hanover Band (1986-1994), Music Director for fifteen years of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (1989-2004), Principal Conductor of the Händel Festspiele at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe (1990-1998), the first Principal Conductor of Umeå Symphony Orchestra & Northern Opera Sweden (1995-2001), Conductor for seventeen years with the Västerås Sinfonietta in Sweden (1995-2011), Music Director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in Winnipeg (1999-2005), the first Principal Conductor of Holland Symfonia & Dutch National Ballet (2003-2006), Conductor of the Bachkoor Holland accompanied by the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Kamerorkest (2003-2010), and as Principal Guest Conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand (2007-2011) 　　  　　Born in January 1951, Roy Goodman achieved international fame with King’s College Choir as the boy soloist in Allegri’s Miserere (Decca 1963). (see end of Discography page!) 　　Already in 1970 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and completed his violin studies with a performer's ARCM and a music teacher's diploma ‘with credit’. 　　For eight years from 1971, Roy was Head of the Music Department at two large comprehensive schools, and then Senior String Tutor (in charge of all the string peripatetic teachers) for Berkshire County in the UK. As a violinist in 1979, Goodman was a founder member of Ton Koopman's Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, then he joined Trevor Pinnock's English Concert, finally becoming (in 1987) the first Concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - collaborating as orchestral leader for concert, opera and CD recordings with Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Simon Rattle (his Figaro début at Glyndebourne 1990), Frans Brüggen, Ivan Fischer and René Jacobs. He was also guest concertmaster with Sir Roger Norrington and Sir John Eliot Gardiner (including Gardiner’s CD recordings of Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Mozart’s C minor Mass). 　　  　　Also during the 1980's and early 1990’s, Roy was Director of Music at the University of Kent, Head of the Early Music Department at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and he directed, with the Hanover Band, the first ever CD recordings on historic instruments of the complete symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Weber, as well as 14 symphonies by Mendelssohn and 60 symphonies by Haydn. Goodman has now directed over 120 CDs, ranging from Monteverdi's sacred vocal music to Holst's Planets (both with ‘period’ instruments!), in addition to conducting more than forty world premières of contemporary music. His CD recordings of the complete Schumann symphonies for BMG/RCA Red Seal (Abbey Road 1993) received unanimous and outstanding critical praise in the worldwide press. (see end of Reviews page!) 　　  　　Regular guest appearances in recent years have included Stuttgart and San Francisco Operas, all four German Radio Symphony Orchestras at SWR Stuttgart, WDR Cologne, NDR Hannover, and MDR Leipzig, the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in Perth. In April 2010, he made his début with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in three concerts at the Sydney Opera House. 　　  　　After nearly four decades as a ‘workaholic’, (see 20 years of Diary pages!) Roy decided in February 2012 to seriously cut-back his professional commitments - perhaps a kind of semi-retirement or maybe just a few years on sabbatical. Nevertheless, in the 2013/2014 season he will direct the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra in Oslo, Tampere Opera in Finland, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin. 　　  　　Roy Goodman is an honorary Doctor of Music (University of Hull), and in 2005 was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Music (London) presented by HRH The Prince of Wales. He has three children and five grandchildren, and loves offshore sailing, downhill skiing, mountain hiking, cycling, squash and jazz! In Summer 2010 he completed a 2,800 mile solo circumnavigation of the UK and Ireland, sailing on his 11m yacht.