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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Jo Richards works as a piano teacher, freelance organist, and rehearsal accompanist to King’s Lynn Festival Chorus. After singing and playing the piano from a young age, Jo went to the musically renowned Trinity School, Croydon and was totally immersed in music making; singing, piano, organ, and even double bass. Jo has sung in two cathedral choirs, first at Southwark and then at Exeter, also gaining a degree in music and an organ diploma while there. Jo then spent two years at the Royal College
of Music, training as a repetiteur.Since then Jo has worked as a busy freelance musician in Surrey and more recently in Norfolk. Before moving to Norfolk Jo founded youth choirs in Banstead, Southfields and Coulsdon, directed the Chandos Choir, and spent twenty years as Director of Music at a number of Surrey churches.
Jo currently plays the organ for four small churches, and occasionally deputises at larger places including Wymondham Abbey and King’s Lynn Minster. Jo also inspires adult pianists of all ages and abilities, teaching at home in Thorpe St Andrew, near Norwich.
Jo has been rehearsal accompanist to KLFC since 2022.
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.”