Alan Gout
Artistic Director

Alan Gout, artistic director, has lead a very varied musical life. Despite reading music at Oxford his first musical employment was playing in a pub jazz trio with BSSB percussionist Tony Summers, followed by touring with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a trombonist in the Gilbert & Sullivan operas.

This versatility soon led to extensive work on many West End musicals, composing and arranging

at the National Theatre and musical direction for the Royal Shakespeare Company, most notably for Nicholas Nickleby, which enjoyed a highly succesful run on Broadway and became the first major drama on the, then, new Channel 4. He was Musical Director for the recent Old Vic revival of John Osborne’s The Entertainer, starring Robert Lindsay.

He has also worked as a ballet conductor and musical director for children’s TV programmes; all the while gaining a reputation as an expert arranger and composer of original light music especially in the educational field, with commissions from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Northern Sinfonia.

His arrangements and orchestrations  have been performed by the late Lary Adler, played by Evelyn Glennie and sung by Willard White. Some are also featured on a recent Come Dancing ballroom dance CD and he is musical director of the justly celebrated Tea-Dances held regularly at the Royal Opera House,CoventGarden.

He is a lecturer at the new University of the Arts in London and conducts the Dartington Festival Light Orchestra at the summer school.