New Conductor on the block!

As of the Festival of Folk concert on the 2nd of July Daniel Galbreath stepped down from his post as Musical Director for the choir. Daniel had arrived in an interim role to support the choir when Will Waine moved location and could no longer continue in post. Daniel was appointed to the post of Music Director at the end of the 2013-14 year and has put on a variety of performances with old favourites from Vaughan Williams and Haydn and entirely new works for the choir such as Thompson's Frostiana. Daniel introduced new approaches to warm ups that have seen the choir stretch themselves (literally) in making sure that they were fit to sing and then to help with breathing control they have spent a lot of time humming through drinking straws. I did ask Daniel if this was a sadistic MD joke but he assured me it really helps with the singing. Daniel has put a lot into the choir and the members have definitely benefitted from his teaching methods. We all wish him every success for the future and hope to maintain a link with him through our new Conductor who has studied under Daniel at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Our new appointment is Will Parkinson who has set his sights on a career in music having decided that he didn't really want to be a lawyer after all (a similar choice to that of Will Waine who also chose music over law). Will has extensive experience including time at Worcester Cathedral amongst other posts. He is an accomplished organist and singer (as we all saw on the 2nd of July where he joined as a performer as well as a guest conductor for the performance. Will is very much in keeping with our recent appointments in that he is young, talented and ambitious for the choir which is something that we are pleased to hear. Will has different tastes to Daniel so we expect some fresh thinking as Will lays out his programme for the 2016-17 year. 

We will be kicking off with a term focussed on Handel's Messiah which we will be performing on 17th Dec 2016 at St John's in the Square where we will be joined by the Wolverhampton Symphony Orchestra and hopefully by some other choirs to make sure that it is an evening to remember and a great start to Will's tenure.