Biography

JEREMY HANEMAN is a conductor and musical director who specialises in choral and operatic repertoire. He is the Co-Director of Together Productions, a company that produces ground-breaking work using music and the arts to inspire social change. Jeremy was one of two British conductors invited to present their work at the World Symposium of Choral Music in 2020. Jeremy is musical director of six choirs in London and the South East.

From 2011 - 2020 he was the inaugural Community Chorus Director for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden where his work included being Artistic Director and Conductor for the acclaimed 150 voice Royal Opera House Thurrock Community Chorus. The Chorus has now become the Thames Opera Company where Jeremy is the Artistic Director. Jeremy has regularly worked with distinguished soloists from the ROH as well as members of the Chorus, Orchestra and the Jette Parker Young Artists. He is involved in both the performance and commissioning of new music from composers and librettists such as Morgan Hayes, John Barber, Hazel Gould, Mike Roberts, Sarah Grange and Alexander Campkin. He has conducted joint concerts with the Chorus of the Royal Opera House. 

Some highlights at ROH include preparing the Chorus for their recording of a Christmas charity single in memory of MP Jo Cox, and other performances for the Royal Opera House include the Open Up Launch, the ROH Season Launch, the Deloitte Ignite Festival, conducting the premieres of All Change, Ebb and Flow and the Fused 5th Birthday Celebration, three newly devised and fully staged ‘opera mash ups’ of works from many different operas. He has been chorus master for a massed Verdi Requiem with orchestras from France and choirs from the ROH and the Brighton Festival Chorus. 

Jeremy has run many workshops for the Royal Opera House on musicianship, choral conducting and vocal technique and he was the musical director and founder of the Royal Opera’s annual choral festival, FUSED that ran from 2011-2015.

In 2014 he was Chorus Master for a main stage ROH production by the Jette Parker Young Artists. Jeremy has led the choral programme of the Royal Opera House’s Trailblazer Project which develops singing across 25 schools. He was the Chorus Master for Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, in a joint production between ROH and l’Orchestre de Picardie in France.

Jeremy also worked on the pre-performance event for Ravi Shankar’s new opera Sukanya in collaboration with the BBC Singers and the Southbank and he prepared the ROH Community Chorus for the Royal Opera House’s production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria at the Roundhouse in 2018. In June 2017 he conducted the world premieres of new commissions for both the Mixed Up Chorus and the Royal Opera House involving musical workshops with refugees groups in the UK at a sell out concert at Milton Court, Barbican London and again in 2018, 2019 and 2020 for the Singing Our Lives Project with over 250 performers in sell out concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, the Union Chapel and Tilbury Terminal.

Jeremy is the co-founder and conductor of the 75 voice Mixed Up Chorus, an inter-faith choir in London who has performed for the Deputy Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor and was featured on Songs of Praise on BBC 1 and several times on BBC Radio 3. 

For two seasons Jeremy was also guest Chorus Master for the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir in Dublin, where he prepared the 150-voice choir for performances with conductors Gerhard Markson and Paul McCreesh at the National Concert Hall of Ireland. 

Jeremy has also conducted choirs in London including Morley College Choir (five years) where his predecessors include Michael Tippett and Gustav Holst, and he founded and continues to lead the multi-award winning choirs for Linklaters and Taylor Wessing, two major City law firms. Jeremy is also the musical director for One Day One Choir, a global annual movement for World Peace Day founded in 2014 that involves over a million singers from all around the world. Most recently Jeremy led the World Peace Day concert at the British Museum in London and he was the MD for June 2020 for the Global Song Circle, with guests the King's Singers.

Jeremy was a visiting Professor of choral conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama working with vocal and composition students for a season in 2018/19. 

Jeremy has been guest conductor for the Cambridge University Chamber Choir and he co-founded Cambridge choir Vox Cantab. Whilst at Cambridge he also conducted the Anima Singers and led a workshop for the Cambridge University Symphony Chorus. In London he has been the permanent conductor of the Amici Chamber Choir, Chorus Mundi and the London Gay Men’s Chorus (which he grew from 15 to 150 singers), as well as guest conductor for numerous ensembles including Highgate Choral Society, the Camerata of London Orchestra and Vision Opera. 

Jeremy has conducted concerts in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Opera House and major venues and cathedrals across Europe, USA and Australia. Jeremy has also worked in Sweden where he conducted international choirs such as the prize-winning Manado State University Choir from Indonesia and the acclaimed Voces Nordicae from Stockholm. Jeremy delivered the inaugural choral singing workshop for the Royal Society of the Arts, demonstrating the power of choral singing to bring communities together.

As a composer and arranger Jeremy has written/arranged works especially for choirs and theatre, including being composer in residence for Pleasure for Pleasure Theatre Company, in venues such as the New End Theatre, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy and for the British Council on tour in Florence and Rome.

For seven years Jeremy was the Chairman of Hafla, a registered charity he founded that created cultural events that brought together Jewish and Arabic peoples, which involved cross-cultural concerts at the Royal Academy of Music; and for ten years he was the Director of Music at Fine Arts College in London.

Jeremy is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and he did the inaugural Master of Music in choral conducting at the University of Cambridge where he studied with Stephen Layton and Stephen Cleobury. Since 2012 he has been a Practitioner Council member of the Association of British Choral Directors for whom he has led many workshops, presentations and lectures, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.