Kenneth Montgomery - The Maestro

Getting out of sports was a welcome relief for Montgomery. He recalled that when he ran into the school principal in Amsterdam about five years ago he thanked him “for letting me off those nasty sports and letting me go on with music instead.” The principal was delighted to have played a part in Montgomery’s success. “He said, ‘Well, we’re very proud you’ve reached the kind of position that you have in the music profession.’”

Montgomery left Belfast for the Royal College of Music in London after high school. “My teacher was from there, and I made it my aim to get in there,”  he said.

It could have been rather nerve-wracking for a young man from Belfast, a city far from the center of things musically, but by this time, Montgomery had acquired a really wide musical knowledge, and soon he was making a name for himself. In fact, in his third year at the Royal College he was asked to go to the Glyndebourne Festival Opera as assistant conductor. That exposure helped him get a scholarship to study in Germany. And by the time he had done that he was working with the famed English National Opera (then known as Sadler’s Wells), which he did for three years.

Montgomery also made a name for himself in the Netherlands, following his 1970 début with the Nederlandse Opera in Cavalli’s L’Ormindo. In 1975 he was appointed principal conductor of the Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra and subsequently of the Dutch Radio Choir with some 80 singers, as well.

Back to Belfast
He found “a very healthy climate of music making” in Holland and in 1979 decided Amsterdam would be his base. It’s remained so ever since.

“Music is subsidized in Holland, so there was a lot of contemporary music, commissions of Dutch composers and important world composers, constantly being performed, and at the same time there was a move towards learning to play early instruments,” he said.
Montgomery was also becoming well-known internationally. He was a regular guest conductor with the main orchestras in Europe, Canada and the U.S.

Then in the mid-80s he was asked to help redo the opera company in Northern Ireland, and he returned to Belfast. He recalls that period in his life fondly.

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Nster.com