Category: Presenter Biography

Bob Chilcott has enjoyed a lifelong association with choral music, as a chorister and choral scholar in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and as a member of the King’s Singers.  He became a full-time composer and conductor in 1997, and has composed a large catalogue of choral music which is published by Oxford University Press.  His most often performed pieces include Can you hear me?, A Little Jazz Mass, Requiem, and the St John Passion. Two major works have received their world premiere in 2025 – The Rainbow, commissioned by Choralis and The Children’s Chorus of Washington, and Mass for Peace and Resolution at the 2025 Three Choirs Festival.

Bob has directed choirs in more than 30 countries worldwide and conducts many thousands of amateur singers in a continuing series of Singing Days. Since 2002 he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers and since 2019 Principal Conductor of Birmingham University Singers.

His music has been widely recorded by leading British choirs and groups including The King’s Singers, King’s College, Cambridge, Wells Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, The Sixteen, Tenebrae, The BBC Singers, The Bach Choir, Commotio, and ORA. Circlesong, recorded by the Houston chamber Choir and Treble Choir of Houston, was released by Signum in January 2022, and his second disc with NFM Wroclaw, Canticles of Light, in January 2023. November 2023 saw the release of Christmas Oratorio recorded by The Choir of Merton College, Oxford on Delphian and Mary, Mother by St Martin’s Voices on Resonus.

Dr Christopher Kiver is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Pennsylvania State University where he directs the Concert Choir, Glee Club, and University Choir and oversees the graduate choral conducting program, teaching classes in choral conducting and choral literature. He founded and directed The Orpheus Singers and served as guest conductor of the Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra. 

Choirs under Chris’s direction have performed at numerous state and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and National Association for Music Education (NAfME).  With the Penn State Concert Choir, Kiver directed performances of Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning composition, Anthracite Fields, and David Lang’s before and after nature with Bang on a Can All-Stars and led the choir in an appearance with the Rolling Stones.  He has been engaged as a guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator in the United States, Australia, China, and New Zealand.  In July 2025 he spent six weeks touring Australia as the featured clinician of the Australian National Choral Association (ANCA).

As well as teaching and performing, from 2002-2021 Chris served as Director of Music Ministries at First Baptist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and University Baptist and Brethren Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

For ACDA, Chris currently serves as Past President of the Eastern Region.  He is a former national Repertoire and Standards chair for Men’s/TTBB Choirs and is past president of the Pennsylvania state chapter.

While living in Brisbane, Australia from 1996-2002, Chris conducted the Brisbane Chorale, Brisbane Concert Choir, Queensland University Musical Society, Blackstone-Ipswich Cambrian Choir, and was Director of Choirs at Brisbane Boys’ College.  He was a part-time teacher for various choral courses at the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, and Griffith University.  In 2001, Chris was guest conductor for the massed choir at the Goodwill Games Gala Concert in Brisbane, the Queensland Pops Orchestra, and the Australian Intervarsity Choral Festival in Adelaide.

A native of the UK, Chris has received numerous prizes and scholarships including a Fulbright Award, and the 2002 Sydney World Choral Symposium Foundation Scholarship.  In February 2006 he was a double Grammy Award winner (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as a chorus master for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and of Experience.  Chris was the recipient of Penn State University’s President’s Award for Engagement with Students in 2017.  He is a graduate of the University of London, Florida State University, and the University of Michigan where he received the D.M.A. in choral conducting.

In the field of choral conducting Sarah is an internationally recognised performer and teacher. The versatile array of professional and amateur groups, both chamber and large-scale, with which she has worked includes the Hilliard Ensemble, Chamber Choir Ireland, Singscape, Cape Town Philharmonic Choir, the Friedenkirche Chor of Düsseldorf, English Baroque and Reading Bach Choirs, Harlow Chorus, Commotio, VoxCantab and Dubai Opera Festival Chorus. As guest chorusmaster she has prepared numerous choirs, including the BBC Symphony Chorus for Proms performances under Andrew Davis and Ed Gardner and the Granada International Chorus for Harry Christophers (The Sixteen), whilst being equally at home with community ensembles such as Nottingham and Warwick University choruses and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s SOVocal. The many instrumental ensembles with which Sarah has worked include period bands Fieri Consort, City of London Chamber Orchestra, and His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts as well as the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic, City of London Sinfonia and the Britten Sinfonia.

Formerly General Manager of The Sixteen and the first General Manager of the Association of British Choral Directors (ABCD), which she subsequently served as a Director, Sarah is in huge demand as a conducting teacher. She directed the choral conducting course at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, and currently lectures both there and at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as well as tutoring for Sing for Pleasure and ABCD, and teaching and serving as choral adviser for Trinity College Oxford. Internationally, Sarah has tutored in Dubai, Ireland, Germany and The Netherlands and was conducting mentor to actor Bradley Walsh on BBC2’s TV series ‘Maestro’.

Sarah also directs and sings professionally in the UK’s flagship female voice consort Papagena, which is at the forefront of exploring and developing female-voice repertoire. The group has made acclaimed recordings for the SOMM label and recent concerts have included performances at the Edinburgh, Christchurch, Three Choirs and Ryedale festivals and collaborations with the Orchestra of the Swan in Stratford and Birmingham.