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Rooke (born 1996) made her BBC Proms debut in 2024 with the London Sinfonietta and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and remains popular in the UK. Last season featured debuts across the country, including the BBC Scottish Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, City of Birmingham Symphony, Scottish Chamber, and City of London Sinfonia (opening their new series at the Hackney Empire), and a return to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. In 2026/27, she returns to the Swedish Radio Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and London Sinfonietta, whom she conducts at the Royal Festival Hall in a programme of Steve Reich with Jonny Greenwood. She will also make her Canadian debut with the Winnipeg Symphony conducting Britten and Elgar, and appear for the first time with the Brussels Philharmonic.
Increasingly in demand as an opera conductor, this season Rooke returns to Glyndebourne to conduct their revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia and to Opera North for Don Giovanni. Last season she made her Vienna debut conducting the Volksoper in a new production of The Pirates of Penzance, and she also made recent debuts at Garsington with a new production of L’elisir d’amore (2025) and at Opera North with Cosi fan tutte (2024). In collaboration with the Residentie Orkest and Dutch National Opera Academy, she conducted productions The Cunning Little Vixen (2026) and La finta giardiniera (2023). Earlier in her career she assisted at Glyndebourne Festival on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, in Nancy on Magic Flute, and on Midsummer Night’s Dream at Garsington and at Opera Rouen.
Rooke came to international attention after winning the Audience Prize at the Donatella Flick-LSO Conducting Competition in 2021, subsequently appearing with the London Symphony in several family concerts at the Barbican. She went on to win the Contemporary Award at the first International Conducting Competition in Rotterdam in May 2022, and was then appointed Assistant Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic for 2022/2023, conducting them at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and in recordings.
Rooke first conducted whilst a student at Oxford (where she graduated with first class honours in 2018) and in London, where she studied under Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy in London. There she was awarded the Ernst Read Conducting prize and Fred Southall Memorial prize and an MA in Orchestral Conducting (Distinction), subsequently taking the post-graduate Dutch National Master in Orchestral Conducting, where she was mentored by Jac Van Steen, Kenneth Montgomery, Ed Spanjaard and Antony Hermus.
Not to be amended without the approval of Intermusica. 2026/27 season, 475 words.