‘My parents were just happy that I’d found something that kept me off the streets’
As he prepares to take on the top job at the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the vibrant American conductor discusses his rise to prominence with Amanda Holloway
It’s four years now since the charismatic young Californian Ryan Bancroft won First Prize in the Malko Competition for young conductors in Copenhagen with a performance of Poul Ruders’s Sarabande Blues. The audience, too, was won over by his joyful, expansive conducting – informed by influences from ballet to Ghanaian music and dance – and the way he communicated with such fluidity and grace while the orchestra responded to his every gesture, however fleeting or extravagant.
That success in April 2018 brought him to the attention of top agencies, and the bookings followed. After stepping in as a last-minute conductor with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in November 2018, returning in May 2019, the 30-year-old Bancroft
