Tim Ribchester has established a presence on four continents as a versatile musical leader and collaborator, as conductor, harpsichordist, vocal coach and pianist. Formerly faculty of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and a regular guest coach and studio project director for Cape Town Opera, he has been engaged as the baroque specialist on music staff at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin since 2021 and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 2023. Productions on which he has acted as assistant conductor, preparation coach, and continuo include Il Giustino with René Jacobs; Orfeo ed Euridice with Christophe Rousset; Le Cinesi with Ottavio Dantone; Dido and Aeneas with Christopher Moulds; Bach’s Matthäus-Passion with Alessandro De Marchi; L’incoronazione di Poppea with Jean-Christophe Spinosi; and Hippolyte et Aricie and Idomeneo with Sir Simon Rattle, who invited him to Munich to record the continuo and recitatives of the latter with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in 2023.
Other recent engagements include Theodora in the new Stefan Herheim staging at Theater an der Wien, as assistant conductor to Bejun Mehta and principal harpsichord with La Folia Barockorchester; conducting a concert of Handel and Vivaldi with the Armonia Atenea baroque orchestra in Athens for an exclusive Chinese television broadcast with Parnassus Arts; and the student premiere of his new orchestration of L’incoronazione di Poppea at the 2022 Trentino Music Festival, where for seven seasons he was the director of Baroque repertoire, conducting productions of Rinaldo, Alcina, and Dido and Aeneas among others. Other conducting engagements have included the Bacau Philharmonic, Vidin Sinfonietta, Shakespeare Concerts Boston (including several premiere contemporary chamber music recordings on Navona Records), and two seasons as Music Director of Delaware County Symphony (Pennsylvania) from 2013-2015.
Devoted to the thorough training of student and emerging professional opera singers, Tim Ribchester has also served as a coach and consultant for the Premiere Opera Vocal Arts Institute in New York City; the Steglitzer Tage für Alte Musik Berlin; the NYIOP auditions, Viñas and Vincerò international competitions; and the Tanglewood Festival. The Ryan Center of the Lyric Opera of Chicago has twice commissioned his special orchestrations of L’incoronazione di Poppea scenes for their Rising Stars concerts, and in 2019 he pioneered baroque repertoire in the training of the Cape Town Opera studio with a subscription concert of memorized Handel Italian duets for voices and basso continuo, and regularly prepares singers for the Cesti Competition and the London and Göttingen Handel Competitions.
In 2025 he joins the Salzburg Camerata for the 250 year anniversary of Mozart’s Il re pastore, a performance to be given in the Rittersaal where the work was originally premiered. As a collaborative pianist he can be heard on the albums The Russian Cello and “Who is Sylvia?” and as soloist on the soundtrack to Park Chan-Wook’s critically acclaimed feature film The Handmaiden. He has performed and recorded Astor Piazzolla’s music and traditional tango repertoire with expert ensembles in Buenos Aires and New York City following intensive studies and research into the performance practice and history of tango music. He resides in Berlin since 2015, where has established a busy vocal coaching studio of international singers of all levels.