Conductor Jane Glover has been made a dame in the 2021 New Year's Honours for services to music, alongside the Birmingham Opera Company's founder and artistic director Graham Vick, who has been knighted.
Glover is one of the UK's leading conductors and musicologists, having previously held the role of music director of both the London Mozart Players and Glyndebourne Touring Opera. In 2013, she became the third woman ever to conduct at the New York's Metropolitan Opera, in a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Earlier this year, she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Gamechanger Award for her work in bringing more female conductors to the stage. As a music professor and educator, she has previously held positions as director of opera at the Royal Academy of Music and visiting professor of opera at the University of Oxford. She has been a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) since the 2003 New Year's Honours.
Graham Vick is currently artistic director of Birmingham Opera Company, and is particularly known for his experimental stagings of traditional and modern operas. His production of Verdi's Otello in 2009 attracted mass attention, featuring Ronald Samm as the eponymous lead, the first black tenor to sing the role in the UK. The immersive staging was set in a former industrial plant, with 250 people from Birmingham performing as the opera's chorus, dancers and actors alongside the professional principals and orchestra.
Musicians were well represented among this year's list, with CBEs awarded to composer Julian Anderson, conductor Daniel Harding and Grange Park Opera's founder and CEO Wasfi Kani, as well as OBEs for cellist Natalie Clein and organist, conductor and pianist Wayne Marshall.
