Bob Porter (artistic director)

Bob Porter is Artistic Director of the Brandenburgs — bassoonist, conductor, teacher and concert promoter. He founded the Brandenburg Sinfonia in the early 1980s, the first of a family of orchestras under his artistic direction that now also includes the Brandenburg Brass and the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists, and he created the Brandenburg Choral Festival — today the largest annual choral festival in the United Kingdom, with more than seventy choirs performing each year in some of London’s most beautiful churches.

Accepted at fourteen as a Junior Exhibitioner at the Royal Academy of Music and a veteran of the National Youth Orchestra, Bob studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he has been Head of Wind and Percussion of the Junior Department since 1985 and of which he is a Fellow. As a performer he plays regularly with the London Mozart Players and has worked with every major professional orchestra in London. In 1991 he was made a Freeman of the City of London for services to music — an honour which, as he likes to point out, entitles him to drive a flock of sheep over London Bridge.

In his spare time he is passionate about cricket (playing), rugby (watching), red wine (drinking) and jazz (listening) — although not necessarily in that order.