Christopher Ward studied at Oxford University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and has been Music Director of Theater Aachen and Sinfonieorchester Aachen since 2018, and will take up the Nusic Directorship of Longborough Festival Opera in the 26-27 season. In 2003, he was awarded the position of Répétiteur Fellow at Scottish Opera and the RSAMD, Glasgow. In 2004, he spent a period working at the Internationales Opernstudio at Zürich Opera before moving to Germany in 2005 to work as Solorepetitor and Kapellmeister at Staatstheater Kassel. Working as music staff on a broad repertoire, he led several new productions, and conducted the Staatsorchester Kassel in a range of concerts as well as directing the theatre’s annual youth orchestra project (TJO). In 2006, he assisted Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in a production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Aix-en-Provence Music Festival, and continued this association in Berlin and Salzburg (Easter Festival 2007).

Ward became Kapellmeister and Assistant to Kent Nagano at the Bavarian State Opera in 2009. He conducted several new productions - among others world premieres of Eötvös’ Die Tragödie des Teufels, Ronchetti’s Narrenschiffe and Srnka`s Make No Noise (opening the International Munich Summer Opera Festival with Ensemble Modern), but also led concerts with the Bayerische Staatsorchester, and Orchesterakademie, and the Opera Studios of Munich and La Scala, Milan. In 2014, he became 1. Kapellmeister at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken.

As guest conductor, Christopher Ward has directed performances at the Staatsoper Hamburg, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Komische Oper, Oper Graz, Salzburger Landestheater, Staatsoper Prag, National Theater Prag, Slovak National Theatre, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Staatstheater Mainz, Staatstheater Darmstadt and Theater Bremen, as well as conducting concerts among others with the Staatskapelle Halle, Bremer Philharmoniker, Staatsorchester Braunschweig and Oldenburgisches Staatsorchester. He has also directed world premieres at Prague Spring International Music Festival and Bregenz Summer Festival, and in 2019 took over at short notice the world premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Babylon for an indisposed Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin.

With labels Naxos and Capriccio, he has recorded a number of highly regarded CDs which have received several Opus Klassik nominations, collaborating with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Köln, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Sinfonieorchester Aachen. In 2022, he released world premiere recordings of the music of Leo Blech, and recorded the soundtrack for alongside an appearance in Fatih Akin’s box office hit Rheingold.