Michael Seal

Conductor Michael Seal is the associate conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Also a violinist, he played violin in the same orchestra for many years. Seal was born in London on May 3, 1970, and raised in Rochester in South East England. He took up the violin at nine and also played viola; with the Kent County Youth Orchestra, he was first violinist and concertmaster. Seal attended the Chatham Grammar School for Boys and went on to the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as a violinist. He won the Birmingham Philharmonic Concerto Prize, and in 1992, he joined the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on that instrument. In 1996, he began conducting the CBSO as well. Several times, he filled in as CBSO conductor on short notice, substituting for Sakari Oramo in 2005 in the world premiere of Richard Causton's Between Two Waves of the Sea. That year, he was appointed assistant conductor of the orchestra, and in 2011, he was elevated to associate conductor. That was not a position typically filled with the CBSO (the group had had only one assistant conductor previously), and it was given to Seal in recognition of his efforts. In 2014, he relinquished his violin seat in order to devote himself full-time to conducting. Seal has served as guest conductor with a wide variety of orchestras, including the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, and the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Korea, as well as many of the major British orchestras. Back home in Birmingham, he has often conducted the CBSO Youth Orchestra, and he serves as conductor and artistic advisor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Youth Orchestra Academy chamber orchestra. He is also a competition-level cricket player. In 2023, Seal made his recording debut as one of the conductors leading the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln in an album of Nino Rota's orchestral works on the Capriccio label.
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