Category: Presenter Biography

Jonathan is advisor and choral editor for Hal Leonard Publishing, where he oversees the publishing of choral music throughout Europe. He is also Director of Music at All Saints Church, Fulham, with whom he has worked for several years, and which has been described as one of the finest parish church choirs in the UK. With it he has directed several broadcasts, including a live broadcast for BBC1 on Christmas Day.

Jonathan works as a freelance journalist, composer, and music arranger, including commissions from choirs as diverse as Whitstable Choral Society and the BBC Singers. He has written for publications in Britain and the USA and has spoken about early music for BBC Radio 3. He was the choral arranger for the Great British Home Chorus, where his arrangements were sung every day during lockdown by an online choir of over 20,000 singers.

Jonathan conducts several ensembles in London and has accompanied Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Royal Opera House. His arrangements and compositions have been widely broadcast, and published and performed around the world including, recently, at the Dubai BBC Proms.

William Hunt was a founder member of the viol consort Fretwork and for many years a member of the chamber ensemble London Baroque. He has played viol and violone with many leading period instrument ensembles in the UK, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Taverner Consort and for several years as principal violone with the Dunedin Consort. He has held teaching posts at music conservatories, including Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music and has also directed residential courses and workshops both in the UK and in Europe

In 1989 he launched Fretwork Editions, a specialist publisher of viol-related music, of which he is director and general editor. A keen interest in English music for voices and viols led him in September 2017 to embark on doctoral research, recently completed, at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire into the performance of the pre-Restoration consort verse anthem linked to a series of recordings under the title ‘In Chains of Gold’, of which he is artistic director. This began with the first complete recording of the consort anthems of Orlando Gibbons and was followed by an anthology of anthems by William Byrd and his contemporaries, including the relatively unknown Edmund Hooper — a principal focus of his research. The third and last CD in the series was recorded in August 2023, featuring large anthems by Thomas Tomkins and several others by leading composers of the period. All three have brought new thinking about historical voice-types and sonorities to bear on a largely neglected repertoire.

Susan is a choral director and music educator. She studied at The Royal Northern College of Music. In 1990 she was awarded a Churchill fellowship for her work with choirs. In 2008, she won The BBC Choir of the Year with The Scunthorpe Cooperative Junior Choir. 2013 she received a Royal Philharmonic Award for co-directing Cycle Song for the Cultural Olympiad which was an opera  performed by 1500 participants.

She is Conductor Emeritus of the  Sine Nomine International Touring and conducts the Lydian Choir and Scunthorpe Choral Society. She has conducted choirs at The Presteigne Contemporary Music Festival, the Three Choirs Festival, The Albert Hall, The Sydney Olympics, Lincoln cathedral and various festivals abroad. She is in demand as a conductor trainer, workshop leader and choir trainer. Susan is a Vice-president of abcd and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bishop Grosseteste for her work in music education. In 2019 she was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to music.