Musical Director and Accompanist
Our Musical Director is Andrew Phillips, who joined us in 2007
Andrew Phillips read Music at the University of Birmingham and studied singing at the Royal College of Music under the late Frederick Sharp. He has travelled widely, singing as a soloist with choral societies and music clubs throughout the United Kingdom as well as working with many of the professional choirs in London. His international work has taken him to most of Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East.
Performances over the last thirty years have ranged across an extensive repertoire, covering most of the popular oratorio field from Monteverdi to Britten as well as more challenging contemporary work. Equally at home with Baroque classics and the larger scale 19th century works of Verdi and Rossini, his work is always musically informed.
As a conductor he worked for many years with the Hampshire-based chamber choir Voci Cantanti and The Thames Singers of London, presenting each year a full season of concerts in venues throughout the country. With the choirs he built an enviable reputation in the recording studio, collaborating with major companies as conductor and producer on film scores and CD projects, work which he continues as a busy freelance record producer. He has been working successfully with Brockham Choral Society since 2007 and in the spring of 2010 was appointed Musical Director of Surrey Heath Choral Society.
A former member of Winchester Cathedral Choir and, by way of complete contrast, the cabaret vocal quintet The Demon Barbers, he has always combined his work as a performer with that of coaching and teaching and was for twenty-five years the singing tutor at Wellington College in Berkshire. He has recently returned to the daily performance of liturgical music, having been appointed Lay Clerk at Guildford Cathedral.
For over twenty years he has been the Director of Chameleon Arts Management, a music agency which represents a wide variety of musicians throughout the UK for concert promotion and which also provides a choral and orchestral booking service for concert performances, recordings and commercial work.
Accompanist - Marion Lea
Marion Lea studied at the
Royal Academy of Music. As a freelance pianist and accompanist she has
performed in recitals and concerts with many singers and instrumentalists and
broadcast on both television and radio. She also works as an orchestral
pianist, accompanies auditions for the BBC, plays for choral societies and
operatic companies and coaches singers.