Geoffrey Paterson read Music at St John’s College, Cambridge, studying composition with Alexander Goehr, and subsequently studied as a conductor with Peter Stark in London, Alasdair Mitchell at the RSAMD, Diego Masson in Dartington and Peter Eötvös and Pierre Boulez in Lucerne, before training at the National Opera Studio as a répétiteur. In 2009 he was awarded First Prize at the Ninth Leeds Conductors Competition, where he also won the audience prize.
He is an alumnus of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he worked as assistant and répétiteur for conductors including Sir Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti and Andris Nelsons. His numerous projects at the ROH included conducting staged excerpts from Death in Venice with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera and the world première of the opera Hot House by Julian Grant, both on the main stage, as well as working on the music staff for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Geoffrey has worked for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Edinburgh International Festival, The Opera Group and British Youth Opera, and in 2013 he was invited to join the music staff of the Bayreuth Festival for a new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen marking the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth. Other work as assistant and rehearsal conductor has included Penderecki's The Devils of Loudun for the Royal Danish Opera, works by Pierre Boulez for the London Sinfonietta and MusikFabrik and Delius' Sea Drift for the BBC Symphony Orchestra in preparation for the 2012 First Night of the Proms.
As an undergraduate he conducted a production of Peter Grimes with the Cambridge University Opera Society. He made his début at Opera North conducting La bohème, and has conducted Don Giovanni for Iford Opera and the world première of Julian Philips' Followers at Glyndebourne. Recent concert appearances have included the Manchester Camerata's New Year's Gala at the Bridgewater Hall and two performances of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, leading to an immediate re-invitation for the following season to conduct two programmes featuring the music of Luciano Berio.
In 2013 Geoffrey conducts the world première tour of David Bruce's opera The Firework-Maker's Daughter, a joint commission from the Royal Opera House, The Opera Group and Opera North. He returns to Iford Opera to conduct La Vie Parisienne and is one of three conductors for Stockhausen's Gruppen with the London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall.
Future engagements include performances of Porgy and Bess at the Royal Danish Opera and a tour of HK Gruber's Gloria von Jaxtberg with The Opera Group, culminating in a début at the Bregenz Festival.
Geoffrey's repertoire includes works by Benjamin, Berio, Birtwistle, Boulez, Carter, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Stockhausen and Takemitsu, and he has conducted numerous world premières by composers including Brian Elias, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir John Tavener. In 2010 he founded the Theseus Ensemble, specialising in modernist repertoire of the late 20th and 21st Centuries.