As a professional tenor, conductor, and pianist I’ve been very fortunate to experience a huge diversity of concerts, recordings and rehearsals at the highest level both in the UK and in many international venues. My career in choirs began in earnest at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, under Simon Preston, as well as joining the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner and the newly-formed Sixteen under Harry Christophers. This was a great and formative time, learning with such inspiring leaders, but it has been the subsequent 400 months of being in the country’s only full-time professional choir, the BBC Singers, which has really shaped my knowledge of the choral world in all its depth and splendor. Adapting technically to the challenge...Read More

In July 2019, 22 Voix de Vivre singers set out for Kecskemét in Hungary to take part in the International Kodaly Music Festival, a great honour for us and a landmark in the choir’s history as it was our first ever foreign tour. Most of us flew in, and some intrepid travellers arrived by train, late for the first beer. We were superbly hosted by two local chamber choirs – Cantus Nobilis, who we already knew from their visit to the UK two years ago when we shared a concert, and the newly-formed KEK (Kecskeméti Énekes Kör) choir with their charismatic conductor Peter Erdei. KEK welcomed us to our concert venue, the baroque Piarist church, with two fabulous songs by...Read More

On the 13th July I took part, as is my great pleasure to do when required, in Voix de Vivre’s concert of great German choral music. Reflecting on the evening’s experience, I found myself asking what exactly is the value of such concert events. Not that I am in any doubt of their absolute value, but in this age when music is more often experienced as a pre-packaged consumer item, and with audiences for even the more familiar orchestral repertoire dwindling in number, how can we devotees of choral repertoire best communicate our enthusiasm for it to audiences and singers alike? Leaving aside for now the widespread decline in appreciation of all forms of what used to be called ‘classical...Read More

Singers and audience alike enjoy the well-loved repertoire. It is so nice to be bathed in familiar tunes that make you feel at home. Audiences rarely fail to be stirred by Faure's Requiem or Mozart's Mass in C Minor. For singers it is often a relief to open the music and find that it won't be a sight-reading battle. Sometimes though, choirs and singers prefer to live rather more on the edge. There are Musical Directors who commission new works or dig deep into the musical archives to find pieces that challenge the singers and excite their audiences. Fashion applies to composers and their works and it is often hard to keep your place in the sun. It seems hard to believe...Read More