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The English conductor, Jeffrey Philip Tate, was born in Salisbury, England, with spina bifida, a major birth defect, and also had an associated spinal curvature, kyphosis. His family moved to Farnham, Surrey, when he was young and he attended Farnham Grammar School between 1954 and 1961, gaining a State Scholarship to Cambridge University, where he directed theatre productions. Tate initially read medicine at Christ's College, Cambridge (1961-1964), specializing in eye surgery. He later worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, before giving up his clinical career to study music at the London Opera Centre. He became a repetiteur and a coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under the tutelage of Sir Georg Solti.
Jeffrey Tate's international conducting début was with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1979. In 1985, he was appointed the first principal conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO), and held the post until 2000. His recordings with the English Chamber Orchestra included issues with EMI of symphonies of Haydn. In September 1986, he became Principal Conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the first person in the company's history to have that title. He held this Covent Garden post until 1991, and subsequently became Principal Guest Conductor at Covent Garden from 1991 to 1994. He was Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 1991 to 1995. In 2005, he was appointed Music Director of the San Carlo Theatre of Naples, remaining in the post until 2010.
In October 2007, the Hamburger Symphoniker announced the appointment of Jeffrey Tate as its next Chief Conductor. He formally took up the post in 2009. In February 2014, the orchestra announced the extension of his contract as Chief Conductor until 2019. He held the Hamburg post until his death on June 2, 2017. Tate was principal guest conductor and artistic adviser of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in part as a result of his association with the orchestra from a 1998 production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, from 2016 until his death.
Jeffrey Tate's recordings include a series of W.A. Mozart's piano concertos with Dame Mitsuko Uchida. He was president of UK Spina Bifida charity ASBAH (now SHINE [Spina Bifida, Hydrocephalus, Information, Networking, Equality]) from 1989. A portrait of Jeffrey Tate is in David Blum's book Quintet, Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment (Cornell University Press, 1999). It originally appeared as an article on April 30, 1990 issue of The New Yorker. He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to British music overseas. He was also appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1990 Birthday Honours.
In private life, Jeffrey Tate was partners with Klaus Kuhlemann, a German geomorphologist, whom he met when conducting at Cologne from 1977. Tate and Kuhlemann eventually married. He conducted his last concerts on May 30 and 31, 2017, in Bolzano and Trento, with the Haydn Orchestra. He died of a heart attack in Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy, on June 2, 2017 at the age of 74. Kuhlemann, his spouse, survives him. |
