In 1999, NSSO received its first ever patron, Patrick Doyle. Patrick Doyle is a highly regarded composer, actor and musical director for both stage and screen. He has worked at the very highest level composing scores for films such as Great Expectations and Kenneth Branagh's recent Shakespearian adaptation, Love's Labour's Lost. It is a privilege to endorse Patrick as the first ever patron for the National Schools Symphony Orchestra which continues to go from strength to strength year after year.

NSSO is delighted to announce that it has a new patron, Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the most exciting and versatile conductors of our time. Acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival, he has consistently gone against the prevailing orthodoxy through his particular combination of scholarship and inspired musicianship.

Founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, his performances in concert and on record are unmistakable both for their zest and technical mastery and the highly personal readings of music from Monteverdi to Verdi and beyond.

Alongside the activities with his own ensembles, John Eliot Gardiner appears regularly as guest conductor with the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Philharmonia and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He was Principal Conductor of the NDR Sinfonieorchester in Hamburg for four years, and Music Director of the Opera de Lyon, whose orchestra he founded, from 1982 until 1988.

Gardiner has now won more Gramophone awards than any other artist, and only von Karajan has matched his achievement in winning three awards in one year. In 1987, John Eliot Gardiner received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lyon, and in 1996 he was nominated Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 1992, he became an Honorary Fellow of both King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Music. In the 1990 New Year Honours List he was made a CBE, and he was awarded a KBE in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours List.