Jonathan Sells first conducted the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in 2024 in London and became the Choir’s Director following their “brilliant” (Gramophone) live recording of a cappella motets by Bruckner, Gesualdo, and others, released on SDG in 2025. He has since led them in Handel’s mighty Dixit Dominus at the Edinburgh International Festival (recorded live for Deutsche Grammophon Stage+ and BBC Radio 3), in Snape Maltings Concert Hall, and at London’s newly restored Barts North Wing. Sells also leads the Monteverdi Choir Apprentices programme.

Himself a member of the Monteverdi Choir from 2009 to 2018, Jonathan Sells combines an active international singing career with conducting and musical direction. His work is most closely associated with the music of the Baroque period, and especially that of JS Bach. Sells has appeared as a soloist in Australia (Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium with the Australian Chamber Orchestra/Tognetti) and the US (Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall with Les Arts Florissants), alongside regular appearances at many major Bach and Baroque festivals across Europe, and above all in Switzerland, where he lives with his family.

In 2008 he founded the baroque collective Solomon’s Knot, “one of the UK’s most innovative and imaginative ensembles” and the Resident Baroque Ensemble at Wigmore Hall since 2023. Under his leadership, Solomon’s Knot “set new standards” with productions of JS Bach’s St John Passion and St Matthew Passion at Bachfest Leipzig, Thüringer Bachwochen, Snape Maltings, and Wigmore Hall. On the recommendation of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, he made his Bachfest Leipzig debut as musical director in 2016 with Bach’s Magnificat, later recorded and released on Sony Classical. Solomon’s Knot’s recording of JS & JC Bach Motets was released in 2023, and “demonstrates the innermost essence of this music like never before” (Klassisk Musikk). Jonathan Sells has a burning curiosity for neglected geniuses of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Johann Kuhnau, George Jeffreys, and Barbara Strozzi, as well as later repertoire: he has conducted Beethoven, Dvorak, Prokofiev, Nielsen, and Varèse, and has worked with choirs from the UK to the Middle East.