West Norfolk Singers at Long Sutton May 2014

There have been many musical directors and accompanists over the years and up until May 2018, Nigel Wickens was our Musical Director and William Moss has been our accompanist. With Nigel retiring, we had to seek out a new Musical Director and someone recommended Roger Dear who happens to live in Heacham. We are looking forward to this new team directing and accompanying us and guiding us through some new pieces as well as other favourites that we enjoy singing. Our NEW Musical Director - Roger Dear Roger began conducting musical groups when he was eighteen. He had learned to play a brass instrument in the Salvation Army when he was eight and had privately taken piano lessons. He began conducting as assistant choir master to about thirty songsters, also taking twenty junior singers. He was appointed bandmaster of a band of nineteen at twenty-three years old. He had to resign the position at twenty-eight, when the pressure of completing a post graduate level management qualification while continuing his job, affected his health. After he qualified he was asked to take on responsibility for the choir. The eight years he spent with them saw the group grow from single figures to forty-five. His wife Julie saw an article in the local paper about a brass band that needed a conductor, so he became Musical Director of Rushden Mission Band. He held the position for about eight years retiring in 2012. The band grew to twenty-eight players and was re-equipped with fourteen new brass instruments and a complete set of percussion instruments. It made a CD and was very busy with concerts almost every month. Now he is looking forward to good times with the West Norfolk Singers. He believes that singing in a choir is a very rewarding activity and is a bit like a team sport, where the group is stronger than its parts. He also thinks that friendship and the joy of music are the bedrock of choir membership. Our Accompanist - William Moss William Moss who presently lives in Hunstanton, West Norfolk, was born in Castleford, Yorkshire and studied Music at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Vivian Langrish for piano and James Iliff for composition. After winning several prizes including the Albanesi Prize for a performance of Scriabin’s 5th Sonata and a Thomas Jennings Exhibition for composition he graduated in 1972 and pursued further studies with Nadia Boulanger, a celebrated pupil of Louis Vierne and Gabriel Faure, and later with James Murray Brown and John Gardner at Durham University. Based in London he worked as a tutor in Music Theatre at Morley College, and touring pianist with the Society for the Promotion of Modern Music, giving concerts throughout the country including the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room with the group Electric Candle. In 1974 William Moss took up a full time lectureship at Newark College, and in 1990 moved to Norfolk as Head of Music at City of Ely and Downham Market Colleges until 2004. He joined the panel of examiners for the Associated Examining Board in 1982 and is presently an examiner in composing for the Oxford and Cambridge Board. William Moss studied organ principally with Anne Marsden-Thomas at the St Giles International Organ School, and with several leading players including Daniel Roth (Saint-Sulpice), Susan Landale (Saint-Louis des Invalides), Marie-Louise Jacquet-Langlais (Saint Clotilde), Jon Laukvik (Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo) and David Sanger. He is currently organist at Long Sutton Parish Church in South Lincolnshire and a deputy organist at Westminster Cathedral and the Wesley Chapel in the City of London, and has undertaken several recitals abroad including France, Germany and South Africa.

WE HAVE A NEW MUSICAL DIRECTOR Mr Roger Dear