Horsham Chamber Choir welcome new director of music

The concert will be on March 25 and the title will be Spring: To Life in St John’s Church in Horsham.

“I took over on January 1 from Olivia Shotton. She is carrying on her own conducting career in London. She is in Chiswick and it was difficult for her to get down to Horsham so there was the vacancy and I am really keen to pursue my own choral conducting career. But really what attracted me was the fact that Horsham Chamber Choir can do virtually everything I want to programme. I dep’d for them a few times when Olivia was not able to do it. I think I took maybe four rehearsals so I know them and I just love the fact that they are confident at reading music. It means that I can programme more challenging things for them. I'm a stickler for being accessible when leading choirs. I want to be able to make the whole thing a proper community. Sometimes in a choir you can get people that fancy themselves as a bit of diva and there are others that are just there for the fun of it but Horsham is a genuine community in the way they operate. There is great community spirit and ability.”

And they have recovered well from the pandemic. Generally, Timothy believes, things are getting there in the choral world but many choirs are suffering still from the cash that didn't come in from the concerts that they needed to keep them afloat. Others are down in numbers following the pandemic.

“But Horsham managed to get back to where they were pre pandemic, though we are definitely recruiting and would like more people to join us. We've got about 30 at the moment but I would be happy to push that up to about 45. Really the more the merrier.

“Olivia did leave some suggestions before she left but I have wiped the slate clean and come up with my own vision. We've got a range of stuff that we're going to be doing. The first gig I will be doing will be on March 25 and will be called Spring: To Life. It's a programme dedicated to nature and rebirth. And we have quite a few big hitters to get the audiences in, things like Mozart and Finzi but as well as entertainment I want to provoke the choir in a good way to realise what they can do. In the summer and in the autumn it will be different again. In the summer we are collaborating with a couple of BBC Folk Award winners and we're going to have modern takes on folk music. And then in the autumn I want to explore how spirituality is evoked in music. People are aware how music can do that in the church but I want to prod that to see how spirituality can be represented in music more generally. There will be elements of live electronics in there. It is the anniversary of William Byrd, and we're going to do a larger piece of his which we will juxtapose throughout with live electronics.” https://www.horsham-chamberchoir.org.uk/