Benjamin Holder

Ben Holder is a second year music student and holds the New Chamber Opera Repetiteur Scholarship at St Catherine’s College. He studied piano and voice with Anthony Whittaker in his home town of Warrington, Cheshire, where he was for two years the Musical Director of the award-winning Cheshire Operatic & Dramatic Youth Set, amongst engagements as an accompanist and conductor across Cheshire and Merseyside.

In Oxford he is in demand as a pianist, accompanist, repetiteur and increasingly a harpsichordist, making regular recital and masterclass appearances. For NCO he has worked on a concert of opera scenes, Menotti The Medium, Handel Esther and this summer worked on the first performance of Cavalli Erismena from a recently discovered translation – the earliest known example of an English libretto – under the harpsichordist Steven Devine. He was also recently Musical Director for Telemann Pimpinone at the British Embassy, Paris.

Other projects include working as resident pianist/conductor for flautist Atarah Ben-Tovim in SW France; repetiteur/orchestral pianist for Britten The Turn of the Screw (Oxford Opera); and conducting Grieg’s incidental music to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (O’Reilly Theatre). Forthcoming engagements for NCO include Rossini The Barber Of Seville in the Sheldonian Theatre, conducting Handel Acis and Galatea, and in the summer Salieri Falstaff. Ben is the current President of the St Catherine’s College Music Society and studies piano with Charlotte Tomlinson and harpsichord with Julian Perkins.