We were delighted to award this year's Chair's Award for Choral Leadership jointly to David and Gillian Victor-Smith at the University of Winchester as part of this year's Annual Convention.
This is the third year of the award and once again, nominations were very strong, but the panel felt that David and Gillian's contribution, not just to choral music making but to abcd, has been substantial over many years.
abcd Chair Leslie East said in his award citation: 'Each year we now recognise a person who has made a major contribution to choral music in the UK. The Chair's Award this year goes to someone who has run a choir of international repute for 32 years. It is a choir that is recognised worldwide as a centre of excellence for developing young people's voices and imbuing them with a lifelong love of singing. It is a choir that has won numerous competition awards in numerous countries. The choir of course is the Farnham Youth Choir and it's because it is the achievement of not one person but two that this year we are awarding the abcd Chair's Award to both David and Gillian Victor-Smith.'
David and Gillian were in Winchester to accept their award and they and members of Farnham Youth Choir took part in Convention sessions. On receiving the award, David commented: 'Gillian and I were honoured and delighted to receive this award. abcd has been a constant source of inspiration to us in our work with Farnham Youth Choir and we strongly recommend abcd membership to any choral directors - both young and not-so-young.'
Posted: Tue 25th October 2016