This a cappella vocal ensemble from south of Brussels specialises in 20th and 21st century music. I became their director in 2024.
Category: Music
Flemish singing holidays
I have organised and directed two major choral singing holidays in Belgium: a tour of churches in summer 2019, and a residential week in a Ghent monastery in 2023. More than 50 singers took part across the two courses. The 2019 event received overwhelmingly positive feedback in our follow-up questionnaire, including 100% of attendees saying they would recommend it to a friend. The 2023 event is still accruing feedback but that also looks overwhelmingly positive, with demand for a third trip in a future year.
English music in Belgium
I’m involved in various English-style choir activities in Belgium, including leading the choir at KU Leuven’s Anglican chapel (St Martha & St Mary’s).
Choral music
I’ve conducted choirs and trained singers for more than 20 years. I’ve been lucky to be involved with some very exciting ensembles, ranging from really top-rate chamber choirs (and associated chamber orchestras) to community and youth groups in the north of England.
I also arrange and compose, mostly for choirs, mostly unreliably and inconsistently. Some of what I produce is worth listening to.
Txoriak
I arranged and directed three short (very short!) Basque songs for Lassenne Vocale, a choir in Brussels.
Deep Dive choral music
In the first few years following my move to Belgium in 2016, I did very little conducting, but instead created some in-depth tutorial videos to help beginning choir conductors explore some of the classics of the repertoire. I occasionally add new videos now, at a rate of 1 or 2 per year.
Choral evensong in Bruges
The many Christian churches of the Belgian city of Bruges hold an annual massed service in the spectacular Sint-Salvatorskathedraal. In 2019, the Anglican community hosted a service of full choral evensong with more than a thousand people in attendance. I directed it.
Libricini
Libricini is an upper-voice chamber choir based in Norwich, UK. They perform a wide variety of music, much of it very challenging, and rehearse intensively for just two days before each performance. I was fortunate enough to direct the group from 2009 until I moved to Brussels in 2016, during which time we commissioned and premiered several new works.
Micklegate Singers
The Micklegate Singers is an amateur chamber choir, well known in the north of England, specialising in contemporary music and little-known older material. Their regular director is Nick Carter, but I was their Associate Conductor from about 2006 until 2015. This meant that I took rehearsals when their regular conductor was away, as well as directing their Christmas concert every year. I also took over as main conductor in 2012 when their regular director took an extended leave of absence, and led the choir on its first international exchange to Norway in 2013.
The Clerkes of All Saints
In the UK, I founded and directed the Clerkes of All Saints. We performed high-quality music, mostly in cathedral and church settings. I led the choir for six years, during which time we quickly established ourselves as Yorkshire’s leading liturgical chamber choir and developed a reputation for musical and liturgical excellence. We made our first studio recording in 2013, and were in residence at Gloucester cathedral in 2015.
The Clerkes’ mass
In the Anglican choral tradition, there are lots of interesting unaccompanied settings of the evening canticles, but very few interesting unaccompanied mass settings. This is my attempt to fill the gap. It was premiered in 2019 by the Clerkes of All Saints, directed by Chris Hamlett.
Li p’tit banc
This is a romantic song in Wallonian French dialect, recorded by the excellent Brussels Chamber Choir directed by Helen Cassano, and available on their Made in Brussels CD.
Skipton Choral Society
Skipton Choral Society sings a wide variety of works, large and small, including the traditional repertoire of English choral societies and a lot more besides. Sadly I could only work with them for a couple of years before moving abroad, but it was a very rewarding experience.
South Bank Singers
The South Bank Singers is a group of about 30 adults who meet to tackle challenging music in a relaxed atmosphere, and perform at venues around York, UK. I was their founding conductor.
Magic words
This piece sets fragments from two national epic poems of Finland. According to these poems, music — and specifically singing — is not just a form of artistic expression but also a kind of creative magic.
Myn lyking
I collaborated with John Morgan, another York-based composer, to put together a set of English carols for the Micklegate Singers in York, UK. The other pieces were arrangements; this was my only original contribution.
The road goes ever on
This set of songs for upper voices and guitar, based on Tolkien poems, was first performed by the Larks quartet in Northampton. I originally composed it as a present for a friend.
Two Cornish songs
I composed two settings of texts by Cornish poet Maureen Jackett. ‘The freedom of Cornwall’ won the 2015 prize for composition at the Cornish Gorsedd, which is not an especially exciting achievement since I believe there were only two other entries.
Aeolian responses
These had their first outing at Gloucester cathedral on Trinity Sunday, 2015.
Fragments
An upper-voice choir in Norwich, UK, is called ‘Libricini’ after the famous notebooks in which Leonardo da Vinci scribbled various sketches and ideas throughout his life. For the choir’s first tour (to the Yorkshire Dales in 2015), I set some of Leonardo’s scribblings to music.
Volunteering at festivals
Until 2015, I was a supervisor every summer at one of the UK’s biggest popular music festivals. I managed a team of about 60 volunteer stewards, with frontline responsibility for the safety of thousands of music fans.
Philomela
The poem Philomela, by Richard Pomfret, describes what runs through the mind of an audience member during the fleeting moment after a musical performance ends, but before the applause begins. It was first performed in Oxford in 2010.
Epitaphs
This suite of four short military epitaphs was commissioned by the British Royal Armouries for their World War I centenary commemoration on Armistice Day, 2014. It remains my only piece ever to appear on national TV (the BBC played about six seconds of it!). It uses music composed by both myself and a friend.
To everything there is a season
I have an excuse for this rather off-kilter piece: it was written to challenge the excellent ladies choir Libricini, and to take advantage of the unique architectural properties of the Octagon chapel in Norwich where they premiered it in 2013.
Conducting diploma
I have a diploma in choral conducting from the Association of British Choral Directors, accredited by the ABRSM.
Ballade of Christmas ghosts
This is an overly sentimental song based on an overly sentimental poem. It was first performed in this form in York in December 2012, though the music started life ten years earlier as a song for guitar and voice.
Where can wisdom be found?
I wrote this short setting for a private funeral. It was originally for three voices (STB), but I prefer this four-part adaptation.
Irish blessing
The words of the Irish Blessing have had strong emotional value for me ever since I sang a simple setting as a teenager in the Halifax Young Singers. I wrote this even simpler setting of my own for a York-based community choir, Soon Amore, sometime in the late 2000s.
York Youth Chorus
I ran York’s city-wide youth choir between 2004 and 2008, funded by the Lottery, the Local Network Fund, the University of York, and local businesses.
Alleluia
This was a commission for a wedding.
ProvenceSing
In 2007, I directed a commercially-organised singing holiday for upper voices in Vaison-la-Romaine, Provence. The week combined choral singing with eating, drinking and soaking up the sun in a beautiful part of southern France. It was a huge success, and indirectly gave birth to an upper-voices workshop choir which I directed for many years afterwards.