Brian Jackson (conductor)

Brian Jackson (born 26 December 1943) is a British-Canadian conductor, organist and pianist. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1974. As of 2010^[update] he is Principal Pops Conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Orchestra London, and the Victoria Symphony.

Born Anthony Brian Jackson in Penzance, Cornwall, Jackson was a child prodigy and began performing as a concert pianist at age 6 and as an organist at the age of 12. He also started conducting choirs and orchestras as a teenager and worked as a producer at the BBC from 1965 to 1968. He earned both a Fellowship Diploma from the Royal College of Organists and an Associate Diploma from the Royal College of Music in 1964. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Oxford with a Bachelor of Music and went on to earn a Master of Music in 1968 from that university.

In 1968 Jackson emigrated to Canada to assume the post of conductor of the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, a post he held through 1972. He also served as the organist-choirmaster at St John's Anglican Church in Peterborough, Ontario from 1968 to 1971 and taught on the music faculty at Trent University. He pursued further conducting studies from 1971 to 1973 with such teachers as Karel Ančerl and Victor Feldbrill in Toronto, Richard Lert in Los Angeles, and Hans Swarowsky in Vienna. He was awarded the Heinz Unger Award in 1972. A grant from the Canada Council enabled him to study conducting further in Detmold, West Germany in 1975.

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