Russell du Plessis (Conductor & Musical Director)

South African-born Russell du Plessis trained at King’s College, London and the Royal College of Music, studying with Robert Keeley, Joseph Horovitz and David Burnand. Whilst at KCL he took on the conductorship of the St Barts. and the Royal London Hospital Choir and Orchestra, in addition to that of the university’s Operatic Society.

Russell was formerly Director of Music at Fulham Prep School. He founded the school’s Chamber Choir in 2001, taking them to the title of BBC Radio Three Children’s Choir of the Year in 2006. This interest in musical education has continued with a long-running association with Sing Up, the national singing programme, for whom he has made hundreds of recordings and arrangements. In 2008 he founded the West London Children’s Choir under the auspices of the Choir Schools’ Chorister Outreach Programme.

In addition to conducting, he is also an active composer, writing scores for film and theatre, church and concert hall. His virtuoso showpiece for percussion quartet, Incalcando, written for UK ensemble 4-MALITY, has been performed over eighty times and broadcast on Australian, German and British radio as well as Spanish television.

Peter Owens (former Conductor and Musical Director)

Peter read music at Royal Holloway College and subsequently undertook research at King’s College, London, under Arnold Whittall. He has spoken frequently at conferences and contributed seminal articles on Peter Maxwell Davies to Perspectives on the composer for Ashgate Press and Music Analysis. Between musicological studies he took a PGCE at the London Institute of Education and taught music at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Faversham, also directing musical holiday courses for children in France.
 
From 1987 he pursued a career in music publishing: as Editorial Manager at Schott & Co., Area Editor (20th-century composers) for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and General Manager at Peters Edition Ltd. He has recently taken up the post of Business Enterprise Manager for Trinity College of Music and Laban Conservatoire of Contemporary Dance.
 
Working with choral groups (for whom he has also regularly composed and arranged music) is a long-established passion: in 1985 Peter formed the ten-voice group Decantor, performing madrigals, part-songs and lighter items, both in London and abroad; from 1990–93 he was Musical Director of the St Cyprian’s Festival Chorus in concerts ranging from Renaissance and Baroque repertoire to that of the 20th century.
 
He has participated in conducting courses led by David Lawrence, Rodolfo Saglimbeni and George Hurst at the Canford Summer School of Music, complementing these studies with qualifications in foreign languages and phonetics (in which he is pursuing research at the University of Westminster). He has directed the chamber group Intimate Voices since its début at the Stoke Newington Festival in June 1996 – the group scored a hit with a recent performance of Stockhausen’s Stimmung at The British Library – and became Musical Director of Collegium Musicum of London in 1997.

Visit Peter Owens' website of choral compositions and arrangements.

The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble

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