President                    Iain Burnside

Chairman Paul Spicer

Paul Spicer is best-known as a choral conductor, particularly of the acclaimed Finzi Singers.   He conducts the London Whitehall Choir and the Birmingham Bach Choir and is Professor of Choral Conducting at both the Royal College of Music and the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Until July 2001 Paul was Artistic Director of the Lichfield International Arts Festival and the Abbotsholme Arts Society, posts he relinquished in order to pursue a completely freelance musical career. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 in the Midlands until 1990, and today is in great demand as a recording producer and as a composer. As a writer, the highly acclaimed biography of his composition teacher, Herbert Howells, is now in its third impression. He has recently been commissioned to write a full-scale biography of Sir George Dyson.

His large-scale Easter Oratorio, commissioned for performance in Lichfield Cathedral in July 2000 was an Editor's Choice in The Gramophone in which the work was hailed as 'the best of its kind to have appeared, certainly since the death of Howells, probably since Howells's Hymnus Paradisi'. Another major work, 'The Deciduous Cross' for choir and winds based on five poems by R S Thomas was premiered in June 2003;   it has been recorded as have his complete organ works, played at Truro Cathedral. Recent commissions have included anthems for the enthronement of the Bishop of Durham in October 2003, a Choral Festival in Long Island, USA, in May 2004, and the service celebrating the centenary of the diocese of Birmingham in October 2005.

Paul Spicer is a member of the Council of Lichfield Cathedral, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Research Fellow of Birmingham University and an Honorary Fellow of the Birmingham Conservatoire.  

Vice-Chairman Jim Page

Jim Page spent most of his teaching life at Bromsgrove School, finishing as Head of the Lower School. Since retirement he has been busy in various spheres of the literary and musical world. He started Bromsgrove Concerts in 1963 and was at the heart of that organisation for thirty-six years and is also involved with Making Music West Midlands. He has been Chairman of the Housman Society for eighteen years and joined Finzi Friends many years ago. For Finzi Friends he is the Administrator for the Ludlow Weekend of English Song, which was first held in 2001and is in charge of the Sales Stall. His awareness of Finzi began in his thirties but he also has a passionate interest in much other music especially the operas of Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Janacek and Britten, though it is in Beethoven's quartets that he finds the ultimate listening experience.

Secretary Jane Rigby

Jane Rigby was born near Stourbridge, attending Stourbridge Girls' High School and played violin and latterly double bass in the Worcestershire County Youth Orchestra. Having obtained a degree in music from Sheffield University, where she took up singing, she trained as a teacher. Singing was put aside as she attempted to inspire large groups of children and convince them that music was fun and not just an excuse to sit and gossip. While living in Portsmouth in the early 1980s she started music groups for the under fives, which flourished and continued even when she came back to the Midlands. She now lives in rural Warwickshire, has gained a Guildhall Diploma in Singing Teaching and for fifteen years has taught singing at King's High School in Warwick. Now she teaches singing at home, performs as often as she is able and for many years has been secretary of the local centre of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. She is the Vocal Secretary of the Leamington Spa Competitive Festival and finds herself organising many musical events in the village and nearby.

Treasurer Emma Lowery

Emma is a Chartered Tax Adviser working for a small firm of accountants in Swindon advising on all aspects of the UK tax system. In her spare time she plays the Oboe and Cor Anglais and is currently oboist with Keynesham Orchestra. She has played with a number of orchestras and solo performances have included Correlli's Oboe Concerto with string orchestra. She is a member of Bristol Cathedral Chamber Choir and also enjoys playing the piano, designing and making jewellery.

Journal Editor Philip Lancaster

Philip Lancaster is building a reputation as a freelance researcher, writer and lecturer, specialising in early 20 th century British music. Philip is currently undertaking a research degree, working closely with the Ivor Gurney Estate in the preparation of a critical editions of songs and other works by Ivor Gurney. The early results of this editorial work have been performed, issued on CD, broadcast on Radio 3, and are shortly to be published.   Philip's ground-breaking catalogue of Gurney's musical works was published in December 2006. He is also preparing a biography of composer and critic W. Denis Browne. Philip has recently been appointed Bass Lay Vicar Choral at Lichfield Cathedral. He is launching a new British arts publishing house in 2007 - 'The Chosen Press'. (www.chosen-arts.org.uk)

Publicity   Charles Janz

Charles Janz is currently Musician in Residence at Forest School, London, where he teaches, accompanies and coaches children from the age of four to eighteen. He is also Director of Music at All Saints' Church, East Sheen where he is in charge of a vibrant musical tradition, conducting a choir of some thirty girls and twenty adults. Charles has held organ scholarships at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he read music, and subsequently at Sheffield and Birmingham Cathedrals respectively. He recently spent a year studying Choral Conducting with Paul Spicer at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

In 2004, he founded the Colmore Consort who have become increasingly renowned for critically acclaimed performances of contemporary English choral music. In January 2006, he was appointed conductor of the Horsley Choral Society, who participate in the top division of the Leith Hill Music Festival.

Martin Bussey

Martin Bussey is active as composer, singer and conductor in a wide variety of fields. His songs and choral music are reaching a growing audience, with recent performances on BBC Radio 3 of works written for the BBC Pilgrim Consort and frequent performances of settings of English poets such as Gurney, Hardy and Emily Bronte. He was for fourteen years head of Academic Music at Chetham's School of Music and continues to be conductor of Chetham's Chorus and Chamber Choir working regularly with conductors such as Paul McCreesh, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Jac van Steen. He has directed Chester Bach Singers for twenty-one years, with English Choral music a core ingredient of concerts. He sings regularly with the choir of Manchester Cathedral and teaches singing at Manchester University.

Sophie Cleobury

Sophie studied music at Birmingham University, graduating in 2004. She went on to research Herbert Howells' evening canticle settings, for which she gained an MPhil in Musicology.

Whilst at University, Sophie enjoyed the behind-the-scenes organisation of a great number of musical events; namely as Chairman of the Summer Festival Opera production in 2004 and then as Chairman of the Summer Festival of Music in 2005, for which she coordinated a week of concerts at the University and around the city. As a performer, Sophie sang with the Birmingham University Singers, the Ex Cathedra Vocal Academy and the Birmingham Oratory Choir.

James Gorick

James is a graduate of the Royal College of Music with a Masters Degree in conducting, having studied with Paul Spicer. As well as his professional music engagements he is Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral School, London.
James' music education began as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. From an early age he studied French horn, piano and organ. He held a choral scholarship at St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh whilst reading music at Edinburgh University. He was appointed conductor of Edinburgh University Chamber Choir and later founded and conducted Edinburgh Symphony Baroque and Floreat Sonus, establishing regular series of concerts in Scotland. As a performer and conductor with an academic background, he brings to Floreat Sonus an extensive and particular understanding enjoyed by contemporary audiences

Rolf Jordan

Rolf Jordan is an artist and designer currently living in Wirral. He studied art and design at Wirral Metropolitan College, and Blackpool and The Fylde College from 1985-91, becoming a stonemason and then writer and designer. Listening to music has always played an important part in his non-musician's life, and he has taken a close interest in British music for fifteen years, after discovering the works of Vaughan Williams and 'exploring in all directions from there'. He has written several articles for the RVW Journal, was Editor of the Ivor Gurney Society Newsletter from 2002-7, and is Editor of the 2007 Finzi Friends' anthology volume 'The Clock of the Years'. His musically-inspired art includes a series of portrait busts created in 2000-02 (now obsolete and collectible), and the solo exhibition of oil paintings and ink drawings entitled 'Inspired by English Music', held in Ludlow during the May and June 2007 to coincide with the Friends' Weekend of English Song.

Martin Lee-Browne

Martin Lee-Browne's life so far has been very musically oriented, despite spending his working life as a solicitor and a part-time soldier, and he and his wife have musical children. As a schoolboy, Martin was taught by GF's friend John Russell (who gave the f.p. of Eclogue), and through the latter became a percussion (and very occasionally [rehearsals only] timps) player in the Newbury String Players in 1950-1951. Herbert (John) Sumsion and his wife Alice were great friends of his parents, and Martin consequently had contact with Gerald Finzi at the 1950 and 1953 Gloucester Three Choirs Festivals. At Cambridge he sang with the University Madrigal Society (not the Chamber Choir) under Boris Ord (including the 1954 Proms performance of A Garland for The Queen).

  Martin has sung in choirs since he was an undergraduate - currently including the Three Choirs Festival Chorus   and the London Philharmonic Choir. He was the Chairman of the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival between 1998 and 1992 (and hence for the memorable 2001 Festival of entirely English music), and is still a member of the TCF Association. He has written a biography of his grandfather Frederic Austin; he researches into, and writes articles on, English music c.1900-1940 ; and he edits the Delius Society Journal.

Jennie McGregor-Smith

Jennie McGregor-Smith has spent most of her life working either professionally or voluntarily for charitable bodies, most of them in the arts. After 25 years with Bromsgrove Concerts promoting chamber music, with an emphasis on unusual repertoire and new work, she is now retired. However, not being able to get rid of the promoting bug, she currently puts on summer vocal concerts in Tardebigge Church, trying to help raise awareness of the pleasures of English Song.

She became a Finzi Friend in time for the second of the triennial weekends of English Music in 1984 and has very much enjoyed being on the committee and part of the team organising the Ludlow weekends of song. In 2002 she published a biographical study of a Bromsgrove Victorian architect, and is now working on a local history project. She is Victorian Society caseworker for the Bromsgrove area. Recreation is opera of the Britten, Janacek, Strauss variety, chamber music, theatre, concerts and gardening.