MEET THE TEAM
The work of the Chorus is supported by a committed and talented team from within the membership. Our musical training and direction is led by our professional Music Director, with the support of our répétiteur.
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Ben is a versatile classical music professional, balancing arts management with a freelance career as a conductor and keyboardist.
As Festival Manager of King’s Lynn Festival, he oversees all aspects of creative and administrative planning, strategy, development, and delivery. He joined the Festival from James Brown Management in Cambridge with whom he worked as an Artist Manager, providing high level creative, operational, and administrative support to celebrated conductors and instrumentalists of international renown.
He is Music Director of King’s Lynn Festival Chorus, a one hundred strong choir collaborating with distinguished soloists and ensembles to perform from a wide-ranging repertoire. Recent highlights include Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor, Duruflé’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and a gala concert of Gilbert and Sullivan including a semi-staged performance of the one-act comic opera Trial by Jury with soloists Sarah Fox and Simon Butteriss. As a conductor he has worked with choral ensembles across a wide range of age and ability and has studied the art with Patrick Russill and Paul Brough.
An MA graduate of the University of York — where he achieved one of the highest marks ever awarded by the faculty — his studies with Professor Peter Seymour focussed on historically informed performance; specifically, the influence on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach by his European counterparts and their country’s cultures and practices.
Church music shaped much of his initial training and early career, and he has previously held positions at several of this country’s most eminent churches and cathedrals. Indeed, his musical life began aged seven as a chorister in the then men and boys’ choral tradition of his local parish church choir. Despite a considerable waiting list for the most well-regarded piano teacher locally, lessons began in earnest when aged just nine he wouldn’t take no for an answer, personally telephoning daily to check availability. She eventually gave in!
Equally at home at the organ, piano, harpsichord, and forte piano, he collaborates with both instrumentalists and singers as an accompanist, and as an ensemble and continuo player has worked with notable groups including The Royal Northern Sinfonia, Yorkshire Baroque Soloists, The Sixteen, London Mozart Players, and BBC Philharmonic live on BBC Radio 3. He has studied the organ with Andrew Reid, David Titterington, Ian Curror, Henry Fairs, and Robert Quinney, and harpsichord and forte piano with Peter Seymour.
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Joe Richards, répétiteur to the Kings Lynn Festival Chorus, also works as Organist at Wymondham Abbey and elsewhere, and as a piano teacher at home in Thorpe St Andrew. After singing and playing the piano from a young age, teaching himself to improvise and sight read, he went to the musically renowned Trinity School, Croydon, and was totally immersed in music making: singing, choirs, piano, accompanying, organ, and even double bass.
Joe has sung in two cathedral choirs, first at Southwark Cathedral with Harry Bramma and John Scott, and then at Exeter Cathedral under the smile of Lucian Nethsingha and the fingers of Paul Morgan who also guided him through the ARCO organ diploma. Whilst at Exeter, Joe found a little bit of time to get a degree in music, despite the huge Cathedral commitment, and exhausting travel back to London once a week for singing lessons with Kevin Smith. Joe then spent two years at the Royal College of Music, training as a repetiteur, learning all aspects of accompanying, coaching, singing while playing piano, playing while barely looking at hands or music in order to watch the conductor, and even conducting while reading a newspaper. All these skills are now put to good use with the KLFC.
Joe worked as a busy freelance musician in Surrey for 25 years before moving to Norwich in 2016.
In Surrey Joe founded youth choirs in Banstead, Southfields and Coulsdon, directed the Chandos Choir for ten years and spent 20 years as Director of Music at a number of Surrey churches.
Joe is currently one of the regular organists at Wymondham Abbey, dealing with the nearly impossible time lag, and at St George's Church Tombland, and is often asked to play for weddings and funerals across the county. He also inspires adult piano pupils at home on his lovely Yamaha C3 piano.
Joe admits to a very healthy obsession for music, and is usually playing, teaching or listening to music, but he also loves to spend time with his daughter, granddaughter, and not least his four cats.
Michelle Marple Chair
Ben Horden Music Director (ex officio)
Andy Hiles Treasurer
Nicola Berns Secretary
Sara Barns Membership secretary
John Bennett
Kevin Carruthers
Amanda Claydon
Fiona Ross
Penny Matkin Librarian
THE COMMITTEE
OUR PATRON
King’s Lynn Festival Chorus is delighted to have the patronage of The Marchioness Townshend.
Lady Townshend is, by her own admission, a lapsed violinist but hugely enjoys the instrument, having played in the chamber orchestra whilst studying at St Andrew’s University. She has a great love of singing, so it is particularly appropriate that she should agree to become the Chorus’s patron. Having lived in Norfolk now for over twenty-five years, she is actively involved in supporting her husband in the restoration of Raynham Hall and organises the twice yearly recital weekends, which contribute to funds for this enormous project. An active bell ringer, Lady Townshend served on the committee that masterminded the installation of a new ring of eight bells at East Raynham Church to celebrate the millennium.
Commenting on the announcement, Lady Townshend said “I am delighted and proud to be asked to serve as Patron of the excellent and highly esteemed King’s Lynn Festival Chorus and in particular to support their determination to bring performance out of a comfort zone into the lives of those who live in King’s Lynn and to areas further afield in Norfolk where they also hope to encounter some long unused voices participating in their workshops and the annual carol-a-thon. The results could be surprising and will certainly be life-enhancing.”