Deputy Musical Director
Composer, conductor and organist, read Music at Oxford, with John Caldwell and Guy Newbury, and attended the composition classes of Robert Sherlaw-Johnson and Robert Saxton. He held the organ scholarships of Jesus College, Oxford, and St Albans Cathedral, having studied with John Wellingham, at the summer school of the Norddeutsche Orgelakademie, and participated in masterclasses with Jacques van Oortmersson and Hans Davidson. He is a trustee of the John Wellingham Organ Studies Library in Oxford.
Postgraduate studies culminated in a Ph.D. in Composition from King’s College, London, supervised by the Argentine composer Silvina Milstein, and Sir George Benjamin, pupil of Messiaen and Goehr. His cantata Born in Flight was premiered in 2016 to great acclaim.
In addition to being Assistant Director of Music at St Peter’s Church, St Albans, conducts Radlett Choral Society and Sandringham Community Choir. As an organist, he has recently played recitals in London, Oxford, St Albans, and Weingarten, Münster, Würzburg, Marburg, Heidelberg and Tübingen in Germany. He teaches piano at Wycombe Abbey School and has a thriving practice of private pupils. He also teaches conducting and lectures at the University of Chichester.
Piano Accompanist
He is a chartered quantity surveyor, originally from Plymouth, and joined the choir as their rehearsal accompanist over 10 years ago. Playing the piano and, until a few years ago, the organ, has always been a hobby, second only to his great passion, railways, but he has somehow managed to be constantly involved in musical activities of some sort. He has been accompanist for the Plymouth Clarion Choir (male voice) and the Aylesbury Festival Choir and played the organ at several churches in Plymouth, Nottingham and in and around Aylesbury, although he had to give this up due to lack of places to practise. His three musical highlights were winning first prize for composition in the Oxford Music Festival in the late 1980s (much to his surprise, given there were five other competitors), performing his own three movement organ and piano piece at an Aylesbury Festival Choir concert and playing the organ at Norwich Cathedral for a wedding. He is married with two grown up children.
About the Society
The Princes Risborough Music Society was founded in 1912. Its name was changed to Princes Risborough Choral Society on 1st May 2018. It performs two main classical concerts a year, one in the Spring and one in the Autumn, which are usually held in local churches. Every eighteen months or so we join up with Marlow Choral Society to perform larger scale works. Each summer the Society performs concert versions of popular operettas or light choral pieces for three nights in late June/early July in Longwick Village Hall. A carol concert is usually held in St Mary's Church Princes Risborough just before Christmas.
The Choir is a registered charity and is affiliated to Making Music (The National Federation of Music Societies). Our President is the well known tenor and Professor of Vocal Studies at the Guildhall School of Music.
Practices are held at Baptist Church on Tuesday evenings from 7:30pm to 9:30pm in term time with an additional rehearsal in the week before the concert. We are a friendly society with a membership of about 50. There are no auditions and we are happy to welcome new members who enjoy singing and would like to join this thriving choir. The present annual subscription is £80.
Previous Concerts Include:
- Mozart's Coronation Mass
- Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado
- Faure's Requiem
- Carl Orff's Carmina Burana
- Rossini's La Petite Messe Solennelle
- Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow
- Stainer's Crucifixion
- The Glory of Baroque
- Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma
Complete History of Concerts
You can view complete information of past performances by downloading the following PDF Document.
Download - 250KB
