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. This season she debuts with 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), returning to Opera North’s orchestral series and to the Royal Liverpool to lead their contemporary ensemble, 10:10, having conducted the full orchestra twice in the past few months. This past season she also conducted the Philharmonia in their Music of Today series and the Aurora Orchestra at King’s Place.
Last season she also made her debut with the Swedish Radio Symphony and Chorus in their hugely popular Epiphany concerts, streamed live. She returns in 2026/7.
Increasingly in demand as an opera conductor, Rooke makes her Vienna debut this season, conducting the Volksoper in a new production of The Pirates of Penzance. In 2025, she conducted L’elisir d’amore at Garsington, having assisted in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2024. Previously, Rooke made her Opera North debut assisting and conducting performances of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, and conducted a production of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera with Residentie Orkest and singers from the Dutch National Opera Academy in Summer 2023. She has also assisted at Glyndebourne Festival on Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, at Nancy on Magic Flute, and with A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Opera Rouen.
She 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. She continues to work often in the Netherlands (now her home base), where last season’s guest highlights included a return to the North Netherlands Orchestra.
Passionate about music’s role in bringing social transformation, Rooke is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Street Orchestra Live (the UK’s first street orchestra), touring with the orchestra each year to parts of England with limited access to the arts. She began her conducting journey with a passion to bring people together to forge meaningful relationships and powerful performances, initially working with student and amateur orchestras 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 altered without the permission of Intermusica. Correct as of 20 August 2025, 554 words.