Musical Director: Christopher Brown

Christopher Brown, Musical Director of New Cambridge Singers, is a composer whose extensive background in the world of choral music, as singer and conductor, has naturally inclined him towards vocal music and opera, and his sympathetic writing for voices has earned him an international reputation. Nevertheless he has also written a substantial amount of chamber and orchestral music, including works for many of this country’s leading orchestras and ensembles. He is particularly interested in working with, and writing music for young people and amateurs: several of his children’s operas have been successfully produced in the UK and abroad, and his choral music is performed all over the world.

He studied at Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar at King’s College, and later with Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music and with Boris Blacher in Berlin. He has been a much sought-after composition teacher at the Royal Academy of Music since 1969 and has been an examiner for the Associated Board since 1976. He is in considerable demand as a music typesetter of contemporary music, and his company Musography publishes not only many of his own works but also a number of practical performing editions of Baroque music, by Bach, Handel, Purcell and others.

He is the current musical director of the Dorset Bach Cantata Club where his wide knowledge and love of the music of Bach finds full expression. Since 1997 he has been musical director of New Cambridge Singers (NCS) specialising particularly in contemporary and Baroque music. In June he celebrated his 60th birthday in two concerts with New Cambridge Singers, focussing on music by his teachers and students, but also including works by himself and Bach. In early July the choir were joined by the organist Peter Barley to record his extended Millennium cantata “Invocation”, together with works by Richard Rodney Bennett and Benjamin Britten. In 2008 Chris’s 65th birthday and also his ten years as musical director were celebrated by New Cambridge Singers who commissioned him to write a new piece “Sunlight on A Pale Green Ocean” which received its first two performances in the Spring. Later his “Christmas Cantata” was performed together with Bach's Magnificat (E flat version) at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2011 his “Tres Cantus Sacri” were performed by NCS as a companion piece to the E minor Mass by Bruckner in Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge, accompanied by members of the Sinfonia of Cambridge.

Chris also runs a music publishing company, Musography.

Contact Chris at musicaldirector@newcambridgesingers.org.uk