Tim Burke is a conductor and composer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. He read Music at Exeter College, Oxford, before training as a repetiteur at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and winning the Sir Henry Richardson Scholarship to study at the National Opera Studio. 

He went on to join the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2006, working as a repetiteur for Sir Colin Davis and Sir Charles Mackerras amongst others, and from 2008 until 2013 was Chorus Master at Opera North, where he worked with conductors including Richard Farnes, David Parry and Stuart Stratford.

Tim is a passionate believer in the importance of new writing and has since 2013 been the Music Director for pioneering opera company Tête à Tête – with Tête à Tête Tim has premièred many new commissions including Kerry Andrew’s Dart’s Love, winner of the Stage Works category of the British Composer Awards 2014.

He has conducted regularly for Royal Northern Sinfonia, including their RNS Minimal with Mahan Esfahani at Wylam Brewery, Tell Me The Truth About Love with Streetwise Opera, Walton’s Façade, and the Sage Gateshead Christmas Cracker featuring Sam Fender.

He was appointed Chorus Director for the Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia in May 2020, with whom he went on to win the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Series and Events Award 2021 for the digital project The World How Wide. He is also Choir Director for St Gabriel’s Church, Heaton.

Conducting credits include Les enfants terribles for the Royal Ballet at the Barbican Hall, Will Tuckett’s The Wind in the Willows and The Lost Thing for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Fanciulla del West for Opera Holland Park, Le nozze di Figaro for Scottish Opera, Le nozze di Figaro and Tosca for Welsh National Opera, Rimsky Korskakov’s Christmas Eve for Chelsea Opera Group, The Barber of Seville for Opera North, Patience for English Touring Opera, People Watch and Tell Me The Truth About Love for Streetwise Opera, Pierrot Lunaire for Manchester Collective, The Emperor of Atlantis for Bold Tendencies, La traviata and Il Barbiere di Siviglia for Lyric Opera, Dublin, and The Flying Dutchman for OperaUpClose and Manchester Camerata.