CONDUCTING

I began conducting at university when I was about 19 years old. I started with the college orchestra when I was at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University and continued to conduct a student choir at the Department of Education during my year at Exeter University. In my teaching career I have made many opportunities to conduct choirs and orchestras and all manner of other vocal and instrumental groups. Since September 1984 I have been Conductor of Hitchin Symphony Orchestra (formerly known as Hitchin Concert Orchestra) and have regularly rehearsed the orchestra and conducted them in two symphonic concerts per year in May and November in local venues such as St Mary`s Church and the Town Hall in Hitchin and the Church of Saint George and Saint Andrew in Stevenage. I have also conducted opera in the Church of St Etheldreda in Hatfield, St Mary`s Church in Hitchin) and the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage and have conducted various choral and orchestral groups on tours in Austria, Denmark and Sweden. Whilst frequently conducting familiar pieces from the classical repertoire, I have always been a champion of twentieth - and now twenty-first - century English music. Music by composers such as Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Tippett, Walton, Britten, Malcolm Arnold, Malcolm Williamson (Yes, I know he was Australian, but he was also Master of the [English] Queen`s Musick!), John McCabe, Richard Rodney Bennett, Hugo Cole, Gordon Crosse, Michael Hurd, Douglas Coombes, Martin Vishnick, Jeremy Aknai, and myself have featured as frequently as possible in my programmes – though not as frequently as I would have liked.