Jeffrey Tate

Jeffrey Tate was an English classical conductor who struggled with the neurological disease spina bifida from childhood but overcame it to become celebrated internationally for his work with most of the major orchestras and chorales in Europe and in the United States. Born in the Wiltshire town of Salisbury, he studied music as a child but turned to medicine at university and began his life as a doctor before returning to his first love later. In the 1970s, he worked with Georg Solti at the Royal Opera House where in 1986 he became the venue's first principal conductor, a position he held until 1991.

In Bayreuth in 1976, he assisted conductor Pierre Boulez on the centennial production of Wagner's 'Ring' cycle, which led to work in Hamburg and Cologne and then Sweden, where he conducted the opera 'Carmen'. Tate conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1980 and in 1985 he became the first principal conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, with whom he recorded many Haydn and Mozart symphonies and piano concertos featuring Mitsuko Uchida. From 1991 to 2010 he conducted the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and was musical director of the San Carlo theatre in Naples, and then chief conductor of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

Tate maintained an international career for more than 40 years even though his physical disability meant that he had to sit down to conduct. He received a Knighthood in 2017 and following his death that year aged 74, on its website the Royal Opera House described him as "a vibrant figure in classical music-making".