Performances of opera and ballet
Lawtons conducting career in Deutschland began in the Bielefeld Opera House as conductor for Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. At the Trier Opera House he led performances of Jerome Kern’s musical Showboat. Two years in Vienna followed, un which he conducted Rigoletto and Le nozze di Figaro at the Vienna Chamber Opera.. An engagement at the Saarländ State Theater as 2nd conductor followed. Here Lawton conducted a large repertoire: Aida, La Bohéme, Zar und Zimmermann, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Die Fledermaus, Der Vogelhändler and West Side Story. The foundation for his work in opera were actually laid in his student years, where he conducted the entire repertoire of Gilbert and Sullivan at the Ohio Light Opera in Wooster, Ohio.
Here is a performance from an opera gala with the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg..
Musicmaking with choirs
Lawton has led many major works for chorus and orchestra, for example Carmina Burana (Orff), Cäcilie Mass (Gounod) und The Messiah (Händel). For the 2018 Kirchentag in Münster he composed (and performed) the Mass for Al-Mafraq, an SATB Mass with orchestral accompaniemnt. For the world premiere, the University Chorus of the Technischen Universität Dortmund sang.Further performances in Wülfrath and Dortmund featured the Young Voices Wülfrath.
