Stephen Layton to leave Trinity College Cambridge

Stephen Layton, the Director of Music at Trinity College Cambridge, has announced his departure from the position at the end of the 2023 academic year after 17 years.

Layton intends to pursue his international conducting career. Trinity’s Master, Dame Sally Davies, has thanked him for his ‘extraordinary leadership’. 

Under his directorship, Trinity’s choir has been celebrated both for its exploration of new choral works and for launching the careers young professional singers. Trinity College Choir won the Gramophone Award for Choral Music in 2012, and in the same year, received a US Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance.

Layton’s plans over the coming months include returning to the Sydney Opera House to conduct the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducting the annual St John Passion with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and returning to the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, with Polyphony and Britten Sinfonia.

Trinity College will begin its search for a new Director of Music in due course.

Stephen Layton said, ‘The time has come for me to move on from Trinity College, Cambridge and pursue my own guest-conducting career, something I have always hoped to do. It has been a joy and an exceptional privilege to work with The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge for so many years. I am extremely proud of what we have achieved together.

‘Beyond the services, discography, technological advances and touring successes, it is the students who form the major part of my legacy: those members of this extraordinarily gifted group who changed the nature of a ‘College choir’ into a leading artistic professional beacon on the world stage. I warmly wish them rich success for the future and I know that they will go from strength to strength.’

Trinity College will begin its search for a new Director of Music in due course.