Conductor

John is an experienced choral conductor and has conducted the following choirs over the years:

• Trinity Hall, Cambridge chapel choir and choral society
• Felsted School chapel choir
• Cheltenham College chapel choir
• Charlton Kings Choral Society
• Capel Choral Society, Surrey (winners in consecutive years of their section of the Leith Hill Musical Festival)
• The Cheltenham Ladies’ College Choir (semifinalists in Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year, 1996)
• Cirencester Parish Church Choir
• Choir of All Saints’ Church, Cheltenham
• Choir of St Peter’s, Leckhampton, Cheltenham

guest conducting of:

• The Oriel Singers
• Cantores
• Cheltenham Bach Choir

John has been the conductor of Charlton Kings Choral Society for over 20 years, and has performed a wide-ranging and innovative repertoire with them over the years, including rarely performed works such as Morning Heroes by Sir Arthur Bliss. The choir has been on tours to Brittany, Göttingen (Cheltenham’s twin town) and Scandinavia, and in this country recently sang Evensong at Salisbury Cathedral. For the Millennium the choir commissioned the Worcester composer Ian Venables to write “Awake, awake, the world is young”. In 2004 John was commissioned to write “In Praise of Earth’s Beauty”, a 20 minute work in three movements for choir, organ and brass, including words by Gloucestershire poets.

John has also conducted professional orchestras such as The Regency Sinfonia and Cheltenham Chamber Orchestra.