Aidan Oliver will take up his new position of Chorus Director in Autumn 2018.

Aidan is one of the UK's leading choir directors, whose activities encompass the full range of symphonic, operatic, liturgical and contemporary music. He is the founding director of Philharmonia Voices, the professional choir which collaborates with the Philharmonia Orchestra on many of its most ambitious projects, while as guest chorus master he has worked with some of the UK’s leading choirs including the BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Singers, Huddersfield Choral Society and the Chorus of English National Opera. He is currently the director of Dulwich Choral Society and Director of Music at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, as well as Associate Conductor of the St Endellion Festival in Cornwall.

Aidan will take over the reins from Christopher Bell, who has been Chorus Director of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus for ten years (2008-2018), leading the Chorus through standout performances at the world-renowned celebration of culture in Scotland’s capital every August. Highlights during his tenure have included performances with conductors including Marin Alsop, Riccardo Chailly, Sir Mark Elder, Ivan Fischer, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons and Donald Runnicles, as well as the critically-acclaimed Harmonium Project in 2015.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus has been at the heart of the Edinburgh International Festival since its foundation in 1965, when it opened the 19th International Festival with the Scottish premiere of Mahler’s Symphony No 8. The Chorus is the backbone of the International Festival’s choral programme and over the past fifty years has worked with some of the world’s greatest soloists, conductors and orchestras including Leonard Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra and Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic.

In 2018, the Chorus performs Mahler's Eighth Symphony alongside the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding; Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Dvořák's Requiem with the Bamberger Symphoniker.