Programme
Britten – Ceremony of Carols
Rodolfus Choir
Ralph Allwood Conductor
Performers
Ralph Allwood MBE was for 26 years Director of Music at Eton College and is now a freelance choral conductor. Ralph is the director of the Eton Choral Courses, which he founded in 1980. Seven thousand 16 to 20 year olds have been students on courses over the last thirty years. The Rodolfus Choir, made up of the best singers from the courses, has produced over twenty CDs. He has conducted choirs for forty live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and was a judge on BBC 2’s The Choir in 2013.
Ralph is a founder and conductor of Inner Voices, a choir made up of singers from state schools in SW London. He is a conductor of the National Youth Choir of Wales and judges the Choir of the Year, the Llangollen Eisteddfod and the Cork International Choral Competition. Ralph is a Fellow Commoner of Queens’ College, Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of University College, Durham. He is Choral Advisor to Trinity College, Oxford and Wellington College. Ralph is Director of Music at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich and teaches at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Tiffin School. In 2012 he was awarded a Doctorate of Music by Aberdeen University.
Ralph established the Rodolfus Choir in 1983. Many of the choir’s singers are choral scholars, some are at music college and most hope to make a career in music, but all are under 25. This means the choir is fresh and expressive, prized qualities in choral singing. Ralph has been the choir’s musical director since its beginning.
The choir has performed in a number of European countries, and has appeared at many English festivals, including the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester. Other performance highlights include St John’s, Smith Square: Bach’s B minor Mass, with The Hanover Band, Classic FM: Bach’s B minor Mass, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, BBC Proms, York Early Music Festival and Songs of Praise.
