Gerry Cornelius is a Londoner and started his musical education at the age of seven when he became a chorister and subsequently won an education authority award to attend London’s Centre for Young Musicians for the remainder of his school years. He went on to study at Durham University and then joined the postgraduate conductors’ course at the Royal Academy of Music in London where he won the August Manns & Henry Wood Prizes for conducting and the Philharmonia Chorus Scholarship. He then proceeded to St Petersburg to join Ilya Musin’s legendary conducting class.

On returning to the UK he trained for three seasons with British Youth Opera and subsequently conducted several productions of Mozart including a critically acclaimed production of Don Giovànni for Opera-Inside-Out. He was appointed conductor of the Morley Chamber Orchestra where he directed the first Tippett memorial festival in 2000. He then went on to become Music Director of Hertford Symphony Orchestra, Guest conductor for The Opera Group, and a regular conductor and member of the music staff for Aldeburgh-Almeida Opera Productions. During this time he was also the Music Director for the UK’s largest and most successful variety production - the Thursford Christmas Spectacular in Norfolk. 

His occupation with both contemporary and mainstream repertoire has resulted in him being engaged to conduct many premiere productions of contemporary opera and music theatre works which have been critically acclaimed. These include the world premiers of works by Elena Langer [[for the Almeida Opera], Edward Rushton [for The Opera Group], Julian Grant [for ENO/The Knack ], Paul Clark [for the Institute for Contemporary Arts] and Jonathan Dove [for Spitalfields Festival].

Throughout, he has made regular concert platform appearances and continues to make performances with many orchestra’s around the country as well as those with which he has ongoing appointments.

He lives in London’s East End.