Nicholas Bannan studied music at Clare College, Cambridge University, and received commissions from several choirs, the Guildhall String Ensemble and the Grieg Quartet. He taught at the University of Reading and the University of Western Australia. His research focuses on the evolutionary origins of the human singing voice. He edited with George Odam The Reflective Conservatoire (Ashgate, 2005), and edited Music, Language, and Human Evolution (OUP, 2012). As a teacher, he developed the evolutionarily informed pedagogical system he named ‘Harmony Signing’, which led to the publications Every Child a Composer (Peter Lang, 2019) and First Instruments (OUP, 2020).
Amy Bebbington is an internationally respected choral clinician, educator, and mentor. A committed advocate for choral singing and the professional development of conductors, she brings a rare combination of artistic excellence, academic rigour, and practical leadership to her work.
Amy holds a Doctorate in Choral Conducting and is the Co-Founder of the London International Choral Conducting Competition. She is regularly invited to lead choral conducting masterclasses, and teach at international summer schools and professional development programmes.
A trained dancer, Amy integrates Kodály, Dalcroze, and Laban principles into her work with choirs and conductors, with particular expertise in kinaesthetic gesture, embodiment, and expressive conducting technique. She has been a guest clinician at leading international events including Leading Voices (Utrecht), chor.com (Hannover), and Symposium Junge Stimmen (Berlin), where she has presented on gesture, pedagogy, and the work of female composers.
Amy is widely recognised for her advocacy for women conductors and composers, and for championing marginalised voices through innovative choral programming, professional Discovery Days and recordings, and sustained one-to-one mentoring. Her choral compositions and arrangements are published by Banks Music Publications, Multitude of Voyces, and Choral Music Publishing and have been performed by high profile choirs on both radio and television.
Amy is Musical Director of Corra Sound, Harlequin Chamber Choir, Nota Bene, and Sempre Fidelis Singers.
Rebecca Berkley is an Associate Professor in Music Education at the University of Reading. She is music education lead and School Director of Internationalisation and Global Engagement at the Institute of Education. She teaches music education on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Reading and is a doctoral supervisor. Her scholarship focuses on teaching musical literacy and musical leadership, choral education and Arts Based Education Research in music.
Rebecca is an experienced choral director. She is the founder of Universal Voices, a free, children’s community choir at the University. Universal Voices is a unique choir in UK Universities, offering high quality choral education for children and opportunities for student conductors to learn to conduct by working with the children. Rebecca is also a freelance musicianship tutor, and has worked as a consultant with the British Kodály Academy, the Association of British Choral Directors, the National Schools Singing Programme and Sing for Pleasure.
Peter Broadbent is one of Britain’s leading choral conductors particularly associated with contemporary music. In addition to his work with the Joyful Company of Singers he has conducted the London Mozart Players, Divertimenti Chamber Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Southern Sinfonia, the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra, Apollo Voices and the BBC Singers.
The Joyful Company of Singers which he founded in 1988 first came to prominence when it won the Sainsbury’s choir of the Year competition in 1990. Since then, it has maintained its profile in the music world, winning an impressive list of national and international competitions. The JCS has performed more than 30 first performances by major composers from many countries and recorded a discography of almost 30 CDs.
Peter’s engagements outside the UK include concerts with the Kodály Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in Debrecen, Hungary, and a European tour with the World Youth Choir in 2006. He gives workshops and master classes throughout Europe, and as the first Director of Training for abcd he helped to instigate and develop choral conducting courses.
Alan Bullard was born in 1947, grew up in London and studied with Geoffrey Flowers and Desmond Swinburn when at school, then with Herbert Howells and Antony Hopkins at the Royal College of Music, and with Arnold Whittall at Nottingham University.
He has been writing music all his life, and frequently undertakes commissions for choral societies, church choirs, orchestral societies and many other ensembles. His choral music, both sacred and secular, has been performed in a wide range of venues in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere. Many of his choral works are published by Oxford University Press, and he is the editor of, and contributor to, The Oxford Book of Flexible Anthems, The Oxford Book of Flexible Carols, the Oxford Book of Easy Flexible Anthems, and the Oxford Book of Flexible Choral Songs. His works are recorded on CD by such ensembles as Selwyn College Choir, Kings College Choir, The Sixteen, and are regularly broadcast in the UK and the US.
As well as music for a wide range of ensembles and soloists, he has also written much educational music, including the Joining the Dots sight-reading series, the Scale Explorer series (both ABRSM) and, jointly with his wife Janet, the Pianoworks series (OUP).
Nicholas Cleobury was a Chorister at Worcester Cathedral and Organ Scholar of Worcester College, Oxford. A pupil of Sir Adrian Boult and assistant to many leading conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink, he has conducted all the major UK orchestras, opera companies and choirs, appeared at many leading Festivals, including the Proms, worked extensively for the BBC and Classicfm and has a wide recording catalogue. He has conducted widely across Europe, notably for many years at Zurich Opera, extensively in Scandinavia and in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa and the USA.
Posts he has held, include Conductor/Schola Cantorum of Oxford, Assistant Director/BBC Singers, Chief Opera Conductor/Royal Academy of Music, Principal Conductor/Fires of London, Director/Cambridge Festival, Founder Conductor/Britten Sinfonia, Founder Director/Sounds New (Major Contemporary Music Festival in Kent), Chief Guest Orchestra of the Swan, Music Director/JAM and Mid Wales Opera, and Head of Opera at the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane.
He is a notable champion and exponent of New Music, has worked with many leading composers, notably Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, James Macmillan and Michael Tippett, conducted countless Premieres and championed many younger composers.
David Deacon is Postgraduate Course Leader for MA Popular Music Practice at the BIMM Music Institute London campus. He is an interdisciplinary researcher and has been working with BIMM University since 2015, and taught on various academic modules focusing on research, popular music studies, music history and cultural studies. He received his PhD in 2018 from University College Dublin which focused on North American literature and post 9/11 culture. David also maintains interests in popular music studies and entertainment law. His work has been published with Penn State University Press, the European Journal of American Studies, and Louisiana State University Press among many others.
Emily Dickens is a soprano, music director and choral specialist, in demand as a performer and choral director internationally. Emily read music at Trinity College, Cambridge where she was a Choral Scholar, before joining the critically acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8 as their soprano for eight years. Emily is Creative Director of Gabrieli Roar and Associate Conductor of London Symphony Orchestra’s Symphonic Gospel programme.
Previously Interim Director of Music of the Girls’ Choir at Christ Church Oxford, Associate Choral Director at the Royal College of Music Junior Department and Chorus Master for Holland Baroque’s Gospel Baroque, Emily has directed services for BBC Radio 4 as conductor at St Martin-in-the-Field’s, conducted live-streamed Nine Lessons and Carols at Christ Church, conducted the National Youth Choir of Great Britain in two recent discs of contemporary commissions and was Chorus Master for Gabrieli’s award-winning recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.
Emily has run choral courses all over the world and prepared choirs for high profile concerts and recordings as well as for film, tv and video game. Emily was Chorus Master for Max Richter’s Oscar-nominated film score Hamnet, and was Choir Master for The Garfield Movie (2024) and Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023). Recent solo engagements include the Pastoral Symphony by Vaughan Williams, Mozart Mass in C Minor with the London Mozart Players and The Royal Choral Society, Poulenc Gloria and a disc of Mozart and Haydn for Keble College, Oxford. Emily performs with The Monteverdi Choir, Polyphony, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The BBC Singers, The Gabrieli Consort, The Eric Whitacre Singers, Tenebrae and Papagena. She has performed in many of the world’s leading concert halls and is heard regularly on international TV and radio; a Decca Classics Recording Artist, she has had four albums top the classical charts.
Thomas Hewitt Jones is an award-winning British composer, music producer and songwriter whose music spans film, TV, choral, orchestral, and commercial genres. Since winning the BBC Young Composer competition in his teens, his music has been heard globally including perhaps most famously his mega-viral commercial track ‘Funny Song’ which has surpassed 13 billion streams worldwide, and features on the ABRSM Grade 2 cello syllabus! His large-scale works include the recent Regards from Rochester, and he is currently writing a large choral work to celebrate the centenary of the Royal School of Church Music in 2027. Thomas’s music is regularly featured on Classic FM and BBC; recent highlights include The Christmas Story narrated by Stephen Fry. He works from his cutting-edge recording studio in London. www.thomashewittjones.com
Susan Hollingworth has had an enormous impact on the musical life of both adults and young people for many years. She is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, where she studied voice. As well as conducting Scunthorpe & District Choral Society she also directs the Lydian Choir, a chamber choir based in North Lincolnshire.
For over 30 years she was the Musical Director of the highly acclaimed Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir, which was a winner of the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year and sang at the opening of the Millennium Dome, the Sydney Olympics and many Royal and National events. Numerous awards over the years have mounted up, culminating in the British Empire Medal for ‘Services to Music and the Community’ in 2019 in the late Queen’s Birthday Honours List and an honorary doctorate from Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln in 2021. Susan is also a Vice-President of abcd and regularly delivers workshops for other choral directors, conducting students and choirs. Recently, she embarked on a musical project called ‘Vermuyden 400’, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the draining of the Isle of Axholme in North Lincolnshire.
Mark Jordan is a conductor with a particular specialism in working with choirs and joint choral and orchestral forces. Equally at home across a broad repertoire, from Renaissance polyphony and classical repertoire to classical-adjacent and contemporary music, he has a particular affinity with large-scale choral and choral-orchestral works.
Mark is the Musical Director of Oxford Pro Musica Singers, Milton Keynes Chorale and the John Lewis Partnership Music Society, comprising the Cavendish Singers, Voices in Partnership and Cavendish Ensemble. He is also a guest conductor of various other choirs and ensembles. His orchestral work includes Alina Orchestra and the Oxford-based period-instrument ensemble Instruments of Time and Truth, alongside extensive work with freelance orchestras in choral-orchestral repertoire. His conducting encompasses historically informed performance, contemporary music and repertoire from Byrd and Bach through the major choral works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Mark is a co-Artistic Director of Chester Choral Week and has served as Chorus Master for Sir Karl Jenkins’ UK birthday tour. He maintains a busy freelance conducting career across the UK.
He is also committed to developing the next generation of conductors and is a conducting tutor for both ABCD and Sing for Pleasure, teaching all aspects of choral conducting.
Alongside his conducting, Mark remains active as a choral accompanist, organist and singer having gained choral experience with several award-winning choirs
Brian Kay’s working life has been divided between the broadcasting studio and the concert platform. His many presentations for BBC radio have included Brian Kay’s Sunday Morning, Brian Kay’s Light Programme, the weekly listeners’ request programme 3 for all and Choirworks – all on Radio 3 – on Radio 2 the popular programmes Melodies for You and Friday Night is Music Night, and for Radio 4, Comparing Notes, The Tingle Factor and Music in Mind. His former BBC World Service programme Classics with Kay reached an audience of millions all over the world. Brian’s television presentations have included the Cardiff Singer of the World and Choir of the Year, and for fifteen years, the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna. He has twice won a Sony Award as Music Presenter of the Year, including the coveted Gold Award in 1996.
Brian is Principal Conductor of The Really Big Chorus, with which he regularly conducts massed voices in London’s Royal Albert Hall, together with recent concerts in Salzburg, Prague, Venice, Dubrovnik, Madeira, Malta, Riga, St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, Cape Town, New York, a performance of Handel’s Messiah in China, in Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall, an annual summer school and singing cruises.
He was, for ten years, Chorus Master of the Huddersfield Choral Society, and Conductor of the Cheltenham Bach Choir, the Bradford Festival Choral Society, the Cecilian Singers of Leicester, the Kendal-based Mary Wakefield Westmorland Festival and for twenty one years, Vaughan Williams’ Surrey-based Leith Hill Musical Festival and The Burford Singers. He is a Vice-President of abcd and of the RSCM.
Brian has twice appeared at the Royal Variety Show – in 1978 as a founder member of the King’s Singers and in 1987 conducting the Huddersfield Choral Society. He sang the voice of Papageno in the movie Amadeus (his wife, the soprano Gillian Fisher sang Papagena). He has also been the lowest frog on a Paul McCartney single, one of the six wives to Harry Secombe’s Henry VIIIth, and a member of the backing group for Pink Floyd!
Ed Phelan is the Senior AI Policy Advisor & Senior Knowledge and resources manager at the Independent Society of Musicians.
A native of Ireland, Ed is a guitarist, composer, and music educator with over a decade of experience spanning session work, composition, lecturing, research, and leadership roles within music charities. His work at the ISM has includes Brave New World?, the ground-breaking report uncovering the impact of Generative AI on the creative industries.
Ed holds a B.A. (Hons) in Commercial Modern Music and an M.Phil in Music & Media Technology.
James Rose is an international choir Facilitator and Vocal Harmony Educator, creating harmonious spaces for humans of all kinds. Alongside directing at A Cappella Academy (LA) and ICMP (London), James recently released their books of choir explorations, ‘Journeys In Voice Vol 1 & 2’, published via Singergy.
James is a veteran performer of a cappella, touring with acclaimed internet sensation group, ‘Accent’. James is also a contributing arranger for prominent groups, including The Real Group, Voces8, Take 6 and Naturally 7.
Matthew Roughley is a nationally renowned conductor, vocal arranger and youth music specialist based in the North West of England. Known for his engaging choral leadership style, Matthew manages a prominent portfolio of several of the UK’s most respected arts institutions and is committed to creating high-quality, inclusive pathways for young singers.
He currently serves as Director of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, conductor of the National Youth Choir (9-15) and is an Associate Artist with The Hallé as well as Director of the Hallé Youth Training Choir. Influenced by a particular interest in contemporary vocal textures, Matthew is also the founder and Artistic Director of Manchester Vocal Ensemble, a collective of professional musicians specialising in original, a cappella arrangements.
Matthew’s performances span prestigious stages from the Bridgewater Hall to the Royal Albert Hall. Alongside his conducting schedule, he is a passionate advocate for the future of the craft, training the next generation of choral leaders as a conducting tutor for the national choral charity Sing for Pleasure. Grounded in classical tradition but heavily influenced by contemporary sounds, Matthew’s work seamlessly connects educational empowerment with high-level artistic performance.
John Rutter was born in London and studied music at Clare College, Cambridge. He first came to notice as a composer during his student years; much of his early work consisted of church music and other choral pieces including Christmas carols. From 1975–79 he was Director of Music at his alma mater, Clare College, and directed the college chapel choir in various recordings and broadcasts. Since 1979 he has divided his time between composition and conducting. Today his compositions, including such concert-length works as Requiem, Magnificat, Mass of the Children, The Gift of Life, and Visions are performed around the world. His music has featured in a number of British royal occasions, including the two most recent royal weddings. He edits the Oxford Choral Classics series, and, with Sir David Willcocks, co-edited four volumes of Carols for Choirs. In 1983 he formed his own choir the Cambridge Singers, with whom he has made numerous recordings, and he appears regularly in several countries as guest conductor and choral ambassador. He holds a Lambeth Doctorate in Music, and in 2007 was awarded a CBE for services to music. In September 2023, he received the Ivors Academy Fellowship, and was knighted in the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours.
Daniel Spreadbury is the product marketing manager for Dorico, the music notation and composition software from Steinberg. He has spent more than 25 years working in music technology, having also been the primary product manager for Sibelius for more than a decade prior to joining Steinberg. He is a keen choral director and singer, and has been running choirs for more than 30 years – and singing in them for even longer!
In the field of choral conducting Sarah Tenant-Flowers is an internationally recognised performer and teacher. The versatile array of professional and amateur groups, both chamber and large-scale, with which she has worked includes the Hilliard Ensemble, Chamber Choir Ireland, Singscape, Cape Town Philharmonic Choir, the Friedenkirche Chor of Düsseldorf, English Baroque and Reading Bach Choirs, Harlow Chorus, Commotio, VoxCantab and Dubai Opera Festival Chorus. As guest chorusmaster she has prepared numerous choirs, including the BBC Symphony Chorus for Proms performances under Andrew Davis and Ed Gardner and the Granada International Chorus for Harry Christophers (The Sixteen), whilst being equally at home with community ensembles such as Nottingham and Warwick University choruses and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s SOVocal. The many instrumental ensembles with which Sarah has worked include period bands Fieri Consort, City of London Chamber Orchestra, and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts as well as the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia and the Britten Sinfonia.
Formerly General Manager of The Sixteen and the first General Manager of the Association of British Choral Directors (ABCD), which she subsequently served as a Director, Sarah is in huge demand as a conducting teacher. She directed the choral conducting course at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, and currently lectures both there and at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as well as tutoring for Sing for Pleasure and ABCD, and teaching and serving as choral adviser for Trinity College Oxford. Internationally, Sarah has tutored in Dubai, Ireland, Germany and The Netherlands and was conducting mentor to actor Bradley Walsh on BBC2’s TV series ‘Maestro’.
Sarah also directs and sings professionally in the UK’s flagship female voice consort Papagena, which is at the forefront of exploring and developing female-voice repertoire. The group has made acclaimed recordings for the SOMM label and recent concerts have included performances at the Edinburgh, Christchurch, Three Choirs and Ryedale festivals and collaborations with the Orchestra of the Swan in Stratford and Birmingham.
Jenny Trattles is a Lead Consultant for ABRSM Voices, which she co-leads alongside Charles Béquignon-MacDougall. A music educator, trainer and practitioner with more than 20 years’ experience working with children, teachers and schools, Jenny is a former primary teacher and Early Years specialist with a longstanding passion for placing singing at the heart of musical development.
Her work specialises in demystifying music for generalist teachers, using practical, inclusive and playful approaches that build musical confidence, musicianship and a genuine sense of belonging. She is particularly passionate about low-stakes singing, developing healthy and confident young voices, and creating environments in which children experience themselves as musicians from the very beginning.
Alongside her work with ABRSM Voices, Jenny works as a Primary Music Advisor and has extensive experience designing curricula, leading professional development and supporting schools and organisations to develop sustainable singing and music provision. She has also worked as a choral conductor and practitioner for many years, including within community settings.
Central to Jenny’s approach is the belief that musical confidence grows through carefully structured, achievable steps. She enjoys helping singers recognise their own progress, building skills incrementally so that something which initially feels difficult can quickly become possible – and enabling people to experience the joy and satisfaction of making music together.
Suzzie Vango is passionate about the arts and choral education, and her high-energy workshops and dynamic choral programmes have gained her an international reputation, working with singers of all ages. In demand as a soprano, choral director and vocal coach, Suzzie has run projects in Uganda, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Thailand, the USA and across Europe, with recent visits to Ireland, the Netherlands, Tanzania and Kenya.
Suzzie is co-founder/director of international a cappella quintet Papagena, founder/director of Sonos Chamber Choir, and a conductor for the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain. She has been a guest conductor for ensembles including London Voices, Ex Cathedra, Manchester Chamber Choir and the Orchestra of the Swan. Recent collaborations have seen her working with: the London Symphony Orchestra, the CBSO, Vache Baroque, Sing for Pleasure, Sing Ireland, Gabrieli ROAR and the National Youth Choirs.
Suzzie is Associate Artist at the University of Warwick and Schools Programme Lead for Music of Life, founding their successful SEND school choirs project over ten years ago. She is also a vocal tutor on Ex Cathedra Education’s award-winning projects: Singing Playgrounds, Singing Medicine and SingMaker, having written a number of pieces for their education resources.
Her own compositions have been published in numerous publications, including OUP’s Carols for Choirs 6, and she is co-author of multi-award winning warm up book How to Make Your Choir Sound Awesome.
Janet Wheeler is a versatile and award-winning British composer, writing primarily for choirs. She also works as a much-admired choral conductor, based in the Saffron Walden and Cambridge area.
A junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music from the age of 10, Janet went on to read music at Cambridge, where she studied composition with Robin Holloway and Hugh Wood. After running a secondary school music department, she became a music producer for BBC Schools Radio primary music for eight years before specialising entirely in her conducting and composing.
