Christopher Milton
PhD
Biography
Christopher Milton is a musicologist and musician who grew up in rural Somerset before reading music at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, followed by postgraduate study at St John’s College, Cambridge. His academic research focuses on the life and music of Benjamin Britten, which led him to Suffolk, working for the Britten Estate and Britten-Pears Arts, where his projects as part of the Britten Centenary in 2013 won the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal for Audience Engagement. He is an expert in the Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire and is a longstanding speaker and performer at the famous International Festival in Buxton.
As a writer, lecturer and broadcaster on music, Chris has worked with most major UK opera companies, orchestras and the BBC on television and radio. Aside from Britten, he has an interest in wider British music (especially Tippett and Elgar), the cultural and philosophical legacy of the Holy Roman Empire (and Central Europe generally) and the Broadway musical. As a practical musician, Chris studied conducting with Sir Colin Davis and has performed in a wide repertoire of opera, song and chamber music. He still lives in beautiful rural Suffolk, where he runs a smallholding rearing native rare breeds of livestock and is an experienced apiculturalist.
