I graduated from Aberdeen's Northern College of Education with a Bachelor of Education, first-class honours music degree in 1994. I started working with the Banchory Singers in 1995 as Musical Director.
My philosophy with the choir is that singing is a pleasurable experience and rehersals and concerts should be as entertaining and fun as possible. I am sure the choir members agree that I work them hard each week, but that we always have fun at the same time.
I am also very keen that the choir experience contemporary works, in addition to the standard choral repertoire. In the past we have sung Britten, Tavener and Maxwell Davies alongside more classical works. We entertaion within the community fairly regularly, so we have a huge repertoire of lighter classics, spirituals, show and folk songs.
Each season I arrange and compose pieces specifically for the choir to sing. These works vary from Christmas numbers to settings of Burns, folk songs and original compositions. The choir finds some of these pieces fairly rythmically challenging as I am renowned for unusual time signaturesand not writing quite what you expect!
I very much enjoy my time with the choir - learning new repertoire, rising to challenges and ultimately making music together which is both stimulating and fun.
