Musical Directors
Greg Beardsell
Associate Musical Director
Greg Beardsell is a leading light in music education and performance. He is Associate Musical Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Musical Director of the Irish Youth Choir and Artistic Director of the Ulster Youth Choir. He has been Musical Director of the Wooburn Singers since 2005, a choir established by the late Richard Hickox. He works extensively as an adjudicator, composer, arranger, workshop leader and conducting tutor.
Greg’s previous posts also include Music Director of the Oxford Chamber Choir, conductor of the Manchester Boys' Choir and Music Director of the Surrey Youth Choir. He was, together with director Alastair Middleton, a Founder Director of Opera Works, a company established to give opera training to music graduates and has been Musical Director for 2x2 Opera, a community opera company based in London. Between 2004 and 2009 Greg was Music Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and collaborated on many successful recording projects, which included Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality, Elgar’s The Music Makers (Grammy Award nominated), Orff’s Carmina Burana and the final choral creation of the late David Fanshawe, Pacific Song.
Since 2009 he has acted as workshop leader, composer and performer for Faber Music's Sing Up! programme and since January 2012 has been appointed a Music Mentor for Music for Youth's Regional and National Festivals. Greg is also official Host for Choir of the Year 2012 and will be adjudicating at the Grand Final in October.
In recent years Greg has worked with the St. Endellion Festival Chorus, the BBC Symphony Chorus, the London Bach Choir and the London Symphony Chorus and prepared choruses for conductors such as Marin Alsop, Edward Gardner and Sir Colin Davis. He has directed the Sagittarian Consort of Cambridge, the Classical Soloists Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestras of Ireland and of Ulster, the City of London Sinfonia, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra.
Ever keen to collaborate, Greg has worked with electro-acoustic musicians, Irish folk bands, Indian musicians, dance companies and jazz bands. Last year in a collaboration with the Gabrieli Consort and Players, the Ulster Youth Choir performed at the Royal Albert Hall for the first time in their history, recreating the first ever performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah. Also with the Ulster Youth Choir, in October 2011, Greg directed the largest ever performance of Carmina Burana in Northern Ireland with 250 singers from schools and choirs around the nation together with a combined orchestra of 120. South of the border, he has just completed the inaugural tour of the Irish Youth Chamber Choir, an elite ensemble he formed from present members of the Irish Youth Choir. This year, he has been Vocal Projects Director for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, working alongside composer Anna Meredith to produce a work solely using beatboxing and body percussion entitled Handsfree. In April he joined British beatboxing legend Shlomo in a rare performance of Anna's Beatbox Concerto in Holland.
