An in-demand collaborator, Christopher Bagan is celebrated for his versatility and virtuosity as a chamber musician, basso continuo specialist, and conductor. The 2024/2025 season sees Christopher perform alongside the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Chamber Choir, the Peterborough Singers, the Amadeus Choir, and with the Toronto Bach Festival. He looks forward to conducting Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, leading the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.

Recent performance engagements as a harpsichordist and continuo player include Bach’s B Minor Mass with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, a series of Bach cantatas with the Toronto Bach Festival, as well as concerts with the Elora Festival, Symphony Nova Scotia, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Early Music Alberta, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Niagara Symphony Orchestra, and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.

Bagan has served as the Assistant Conductor on Opera Atelier’s mainstage productions since 2021, building on an artistic relationship that began in 2017. To date, he has joined the company for over a dozen productions, including tours to the Royal Opera of Versailles and Chicago’s Harris Theatre. With a focus on baroque opera practice, Bagan has collaborated with the company on Handel’s La resurrezione and Alcina, Charpentier’s Actéon and Medée, Lully’s Persée, Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, and Rameau’s Pygmalion, among others. He made his mainstage conducting debut with Opera Atelier in 2022 on Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

Christopher has performed with many of the world’s leading baroque singers, instrumentalists, and conductors in performances across the globe. Recent highlights of these performances are appearances with I Furiosi, Apollo's Fire, Les Dèlices, Catacoustic Consort, Les Violons du Roy, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and the Toronto Consort. Balancing a schedule of both concert and opera repertoire, Christopher serves as a staff repetiteur at the Canadian Opera Company, notably as head coach for their 2016 production of Handel’s Ariodante and as a coach on the world premiere of Wainwright’s Hadrian. As music director, he has worked on operatic productions with Re:Naissance, Long Reach Opera Workshop, Opera Nuova, Summer Opera Lyric Theatre (Toronto), and the University of Toronto’s Schola Cantorum.

His extensive discography includes the JUNO-nominated Handel’s Orlando with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra and Alexander Weimann (ATMA), La Vallée des pleurs with the Theatre of Early Music (Analekta), and works by Bruckner, Debussy, and Busoni with Gruppo Montebello (Etcetera). Additionally, Bagan has served as both a video and audio editor for digital projects with Opera Atelier, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Aga Khan Museum, and the Vancouver Bach Choir in recent seasons.

A meticulous editor, Christopher has published several new score editions, including Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisandre, and Handel’s Acis and Galatea, which will be utilized by Opera Atelier in the 24/25 season. With a deep musical understanding that spans across eras, he is frequently approached for preparation work on new commissions, producing piano reductions for the world premieres of Bilodeau’s La beauté du monde (Opéra de Montréal) and Wainwright’s Hadrian (Canadian Opera Company), and as an editor for Stewart Goodyear’s God’s Trombones (Nathaniel Dett Chorale).

Christopher regularly works as a lecturer and instructor, having held positions with Case Western Reserve University (2015-2016), the Cleveland Institute of Music (2015-2016), and the University of Toronto since 2013, where he is currently an Adjunct Professor in Historical Music. In demand as a coach, he has joined the faculty of Early Music Vancouver’s Summer Baroque Vocal and Instrumental Programs, Tafelmusik Summer Baroque Institute, the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble, the University of Toronto Opera Division, and St. Michael’s Choir School.

He is an alumnus of the American Bach Soloists Academy, the Universität Mozarteum Sommerakademie, Internationalesommerakademie Prag-Wien-Budapest, and has held residencies with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Britten-Pears Baroque Orchestra. Bagan holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance from the University of British Columbia, with a specialization in the piano music of Arnold Schönberg, and both Master and Bachelor of Music degrees from the University of Toronto.

Academic CV