Live Elf Academy Sat 12 – Sun 13 December

Celia Llácer began her orchestral conducting studies with Maestro Borja Quintas and pursued her master’s degree at the University of the Arts in Zurich, studying under Professors Johannes Schlaefli and Christoph-Mathias Mueller. Throughout her training, she has participated in masterclasses with renowned conductors such as Jaap van Zweden, Emmanuel Villaume, James Lowe, Bruno Aprea, and Professor Nicolas Pasquet.

In the 2024/25 season, Celia served as Chief Conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Ostschweiz. She has also worked as Assistant Conductor with the Schweizer Jugend-Sinfonie-Orchester under Maestro Johannes Schlaefli, and with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège during the 2023/24 season alongside Maestro Gergely Madaras.

She took part in the Gstaad Conducting Academy during 2024 edition, where she conducted the Gstaad Festival Orchestra. In 2023, she was selected for The Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors at The Dallas Opera. That same year, she also conducted at the Tanglewood Festival with the Young Artists Orchestra of the Tanglewood Institute at Boston University.

Patrick Barrett is a conductor specialising in choral music and opera. He is currently Chorus Director of the RSNO Youth Choruses, Royal Opera House Youth Opera Company, Irish Youth Training Choir and the award-winning Farnham Youth Choirs.

Recent work has included conducting the RSNO Youth Chorus alongside soloists Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor and Nicola Benedetti in the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s All-Star Gala performances, and preparing them for the recording of Jonathan Dove’s Gaspard’s Christmas, which is available on all streaming services. Over the summer, he led FYC to success at the Hull International Choral Competition and the International Choir Competition in Provence, winning the Youth Choirs of Equal Voices and Children’s Choir categories respectively, and will be competing with them in the World Choir Games 2024 in New Zealand. In the past year, he has also premiered a number of new works including Jonathan Brigg’s The Sapling with the ROH Youth Opera Company and pieces by Emma O’Halloran and DJ and producer R.Kitt with IYTC. This summer, he took up the position of Guest Conductor with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain’s Girls’ Choir and has been invited back for 2024.

Much of Patrick’s work revolves around championing young people within choral music and, for the past two years, he has been invited to address the annual conference of the Post Primary Music Teachers Association in Ireland. His work in this area began as a Trainee Music Leader with Spitalfields Music between 2015-16 and he is now firmly established as a music educator, having delivered projects for organisations including the BBC Singers, Sonoro, The Sixteen, Wigmore Hall, Aldeburgh Young Musicians, and Ark Schools.

In opera, Patrick works with many of the UK’s major companies including the Royal Opera House, English National Opera and Garsington Opera. For the ROH, he is the Musical Director of the Youth Opera Company, preparing them for main stage performances of Verdi’s Otello under Sir Antonio Pappano and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel under Sebastian Weigle, and conducting them in the world premieres of specially commissioned works including Lewis Murphy’s A Different Story in the Linbury Theatre. He is also a regular leader on their Create and Sing programme, working with secondary school teachers to stage specially-devised operas in classrooms across the country. For the ENO, he has prepared the children’s chorus for Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen under Martyn Brabbins and Bizet’s Carmen under Kerem Hasan. For Garsington Opera, he has worked on a specially-commissioned community opera called Dalia by Roxanna Panufnik as the Youth Chorus Director.

Patrick was previously the conductor of the University of Birmingham’s Upper Voices Choir and Brockham Choral Society.

Born in Huddersfield in 1964, Paul Whittaker has been profoundly deaf all his life yet pursued a career as a musician. A pianist and organist, he has a music degree from Wadham College, Oxford, a postgraduate performance diploma from the Royal Northern College of Music and holds ALCM and ARCO diplomas.

In 1988, he founded Music and the Deaf, a charity to help deaf people enjoy music, which he ran for 27 years. In 2007, he was awarded an OBE for Services to Music and he also holds honorary degrees from the University of Huddersfield and Open University.

For the past 13 years, Paul has been working with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on their Feel the Music project, visiting many different countries around the world introducing deaf children to orchestral music. In 2023, he was invited to work with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin on a project involving deaf children and adults and in 2024 will work with an ensemble in Malmo on a similar project.

Since May 2015 he has been working freelance as a motivational speaker, signed song performer and workshop leader, and currently runs several signing choirs across the UK.

Paul has signed many musical shows and concerts, and performed with The King’s Singers, Tenebrae, Dunedin Consort, VOCES8, the Royal Liverpool, Royal Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber, Royal Northern Sinfonia and Halle orchestras, with Children’s Classic Concerts and at many festivals, including the Cumnock Tryst and BBC Proms. He is delighted to be returning to the RSNO after joining them last November for James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio.

See Paul Whittaker perform Ode to Joy on 12 and 13 June 2026.