Andrew Constantine

Andrew Constantine (born William Andrew Constantine, 30 December 1961, County Durham, England) is a British conductor. He is currently the Music Director of both the Fort Wayne Philharmonic (appointed 2009) and the Reading Symphony Orchestra (appointed 2007).

Born in County Durham, England in 1961, Constantine began playing the cello at age eleven. At the age of sixteen, he went to a boarding school specializing in music – the Wells Cathedral School in Somerset, England. From there, he studied further at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and later enrolled in the University of Leicester, where he studied conducting and began to perform as a conductor. He studied firstly with John Carewe and Norman Del Mar, then later with Ferdinand Leitner at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and Leonard Bernstein at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. After winning the first Donatella Flick/ Accademia Italiana Conducting Competition, Constantine went to Russia’s Leningrad Conservatory for a year of study with the then 90-year-old Ilya Musin. A conductor, teacher and theorist of conducting, Musin taught at the Conservatory for six decades, and his book, “The Techniques of Conducting,” has been followed worldwide

In 1986, Constantine began his rise as a conductor in a most unusual way. Bringing together many musicians from a range of different backgrounds (who, though they had studied music to the highest levels, pursued careers outside of music) in and around the Leicestershire (U.K.) area, Constantine founded the Bardi Symphony Orchestra. A professional orchestra still with its current home in Leicester at De Montfort Hall, the Bardi is associated with performers from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the CBSO. At the same time, Constantine worked regularly with nearly all of the finest British orchestras mentioned previously as well as having strong relationships with a number of European and Scandinavian orchestras including the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, where he has worked frequently as a guest conductor. After winning the first Donatella Flick/ Accademia Italiana Conducting Competition Andrew Constantine made his Royal Festival Hall debut with the London Philharmonic. In 2003 he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music by the University of Leicester, for this “contribution to music”, and also a prestigious British NESTA Fellowship to further develop his international career.

Having gained a reputation in Europe and the UK as a conductor of great skill, charisma, energy and versatility, Andrew Constantine moved to the US in 2004 to become Assistant Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Constantine has always had a love of Russian conductors, and because Yuri Temirkanov was conductor of the Baltimore Symphony at that time, it was an opportunity he gladly seized. He knew of Temirkanov’s sterling reputation as a guest conductor for the leading orchestras of Europe, Asia and the United States and of his longtime position as Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia. Within Constantine’s first season in Baltimore, he was promoted to Associate Conductor, consistently working many of the orchestra’s main concerts whilst stressing the importance of educational concerts which he himself took charge of as well. As he states, “I really see the education concerts as the future of this whole business. It's all about how to get enough kids through the door, and literally leave no child behind. This is where we should be investing our enthusiasm".

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