Category: Presenter Biography

Alongside her role as Training Manager for the Association of British Choral Directors, Elisabeth is a conductor and music educator. She is passionate about the importance of high-quality and accessible music education for children and adults alike, believing in the transformative power that musical experiences can bring. 

Originally from North Lincolnshire, Elisabeth’s love of music began when she joined the open access and award-winning Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir at just four years old. Over the next fifteen years, Elisabeth’s experiences with the choir instilled in her a love of choral music and encouraged her to pursue a career in music. She graduated from the University of Oxford in 2015 with a BA Hons Music (First Class) and was one of five recipients of the Vice Chancellor’s Social Impact Award in 2015 in recognition of her commitment to music education and outreach work across Oxford state schools whilst at university.

Over the last ten years she has gained experience in music education settings across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, working with schools and music hubs as well as arts organisations like Sing for Pleasure, Voices Foundation and the National Centre for Early Music.

In September 2016, Elisabeth began working for the Opera North Learning & Engagement Department and since 2021, she has been the EYFS & KS1 Lead for the In Harmony Opera North (IHON) programme. She is passionate about the importance of developing musical literacy and creative performance skills from the early years and this role has given her the opportunity to write and develop the EYFS, KS1 and Musicianship strand of the IHON curriculum, as well as regularly delivering classroom sessions. She is in the process of developing a pack of CPD resources designed to support classroom teachers to deliver a high-quality musicianship-based curriculum through singing.

Committed to her professional development, Elisabeth has completed the British Kodály Academy’s “Certificate of Professional Practice in the Kodály Concept of Music Education: Primary Level 1 & 2” and she is currently pursuing her Level 3 certification.

In addition to her educational work, Elisabeth is the co-founder and director of Saints’ Singers, an upper voice community choir in North Lincolnshire.

Tom enjoys a reputation as an outstanding and inspirational choral director with a passion for education and widening access to musical opportunity. Educated at Cambridge University, where he held the Organ Scholarship at Downing College, he is the Director of the Diocese of Leeds’ internationally acclaimed Schools Singing Programme, leading one of the most innovative and successful choral programmes in the country, involving some 75 schools and over 6500 children weekly, with its choirs broadcasting regularly on BBC radio and enjoying international competition and concert success. 

Tom combines this with his roles as a consultant for the National Schools Singing Programme and as Musical Director of the award-winning Bradford Festival Choral Society, together with frequent appearances as a guest conductor and workshop leader.

His numerous recording credits include the complete choral works of Duruflé and complete organ works of Arvo Pärt for Brilliant Classics and he has broadcast on BBC1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Classic FM and Radio France.  Solo recitals have included many of the major UK venues, including Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and King’s College, Cambridge.  

In recent years he has been the Artistic Director for the Association of British Choral Directors’ Annual Convention; his educational work has been recognised by the Worshipful Company of Educators’ Masters’ Award and with a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for the work of the Diocese of Leeds Schools Singing Programme.

www.thomasleech.com

Douglas is well known to music educators and choral practitioners in the UK and beyond. He is a prolific composer, choral clinician and conductor. Much of his compositional output involves singers – from full-length Cantatas, Masses, a Requiem , a Ballet and Operas, to separate songs for a variety of forces. Douglas is always open to commissions and projects involving voices. He frequently conducts massed choral events for young people at the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, The Barbican, London and in major concert halls elsewhere. In-service teachers’ courses, as well as conducting and writing for the New English Concert Orchestra (the orchestra for the Battle Proms series), two adult choirs and many choral and orchestral commissions, also feature in his very full schedule. He has been an adjudicator since 1968 and has been the Chair of Adjudicators for the British and International Federation of Festivals (Music.) In November 2010, Douglas was delighted to accept an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Gloucestershire University and he was also honoured to have been awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of 2012 for Services to Music. In October 2019 he was elected Associate Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge University in recognition of his work with the college’s Charter Choir. As well as on-going work with Homerton Charter Choir, he is now conductor of The Homerton Singers, a choral society based at the college, encompassing staff, students and outsiders – in addition to his a cappella chamber choir The Ensemble of Friends. His teaching at Homerton College also includes conducting and orchestration.

Douglas has been the music consultant for the annual BBC TV Songs of Praise School Choirs of the Year competition and Chairman of the panel of adjudicators for the Barnardo’s Choral Competition since its inception. He meets countless young people and adult singers in the UK and abroad in the course of his workshops and conducting clinics. As a music educator, over a period of 20 years, he wrote, produced and broadcast two BBC Programmes for Schools – Time and Tune and Singing Together through which he helped teachers and children develop a love for and an understanding of music. Douglas was also responsible for many original worship songs and all 250 arrangements in the three Come and Praise books published by the BBC.