Musical Direcor for 2023/24: Nicholas Hurndall Smith

We are delighted to welcome Nicholas Hurndall Smith as our MD for this season. Nick is a professional singer, music teacher and voice coach and brings a great range of skills to the choir which, in the previous year, benefitted enormously from Jen Hartley's leadership. We have had to say "au-revoir" to Jen for a while due to her work commitments, but we are extremely fortunate in having Nick take up the reins.

Musical Director for 2022/23: Jen Hartley

Starting from September 2022, we are delighted to have Jen Hartley as our new director of music. She comes very well regarded and has invigorated the choir. Jen studied piano with Graeme Humphrey in London before going on to read Music at Cambridge University. Following her PGCE, she has taught in secondary schools for the past 24 years, and has extensive experience in working with choirs, orchestras, and smaller ensembles. She is an experienced accompanist, and enjoys performing as one half of a piano duo. Her compositions have included works for theatre and ballet and several standalone pieces for choir, orchestra, and chamber groups, and she is the current Associate Composer for the Cumbria Opera Group. Jen completed her MA at York University in 2017 on the subject of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony. In mid 2023 Jen was awarded her PhD at RNCM, for researching (broadly speaking) ways of nurturing creative autonomy in A-level composition students through group improvisation and imaginative listening.