Guest Conductors
Bill Carslake
Bill composes music inspired by fieldwork, in collaboration with artists, scientists and outdoor specialists. He maintains a busy conducting career. He is passionate about eco sail travel and trade.
His latest composition is Carrownagappul, commissioned by the Harry Woolhouse Trust for the 25th anniversary of Imperial College Sinfonietta, and inspired by fieldwork on Carrownagappul raised bog, Galway. He collaborated with renowned Irish photographer, Tina Claffey, whose photographs inform the work. The premiere was in June at Imperial College Great Hall, London. In 2018/19 he won a Finzi Scholarship to compose a piece inspired by Mountain Hares. Disco Ball – Mountain Hare was premiered by Farnborough Symphony Orchestra in 2022. The research trips for this piece inspired the travel essay, Composing in the Cairngorms; and the project features in a Finzi Trust podcast. In 2016 Bill collaborated with the poet, Helen Mort, on an exploratory climbing expedition in East Greenland for a piece commissioned by The Little Baroque Company. The Singing Glacier includes original spoken poetry by Helen and film by Richard Jones. Helen’s poetry and the project were celebrated by Hercules Editions in a chapbook, The Singing Glacier, with paintings by Emma Stibbon RA. 2024 sees the launch of The Sea of Trees. This will include sailing from Kerry to the Faroe Islands, and will highlight the plight of phytoplankton – the so-called ‘marine forest’. Bill is Artistic Director of Farnborough Symphony Orchestra and St Albans Symphony Orchestra. He guest conducts widely. He is also co-founder of Guild of Ships – a booking system and circular economy platform for eco sail travel and trade.
Orlando Jopling
Orlando Jopling combines a deep knowledge of orchestral and operatic repertoire with a thirst for new music and discovering new composers. He has worked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Mozart Players and the Irish Chamber Orchestra among many others, both on the concert platform and in the recording studio.
He was principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Orchestral Society for ten years. He transformed their repertoire to include twentieth and 21st century composers, introduced soloists James Gilchrist, Tim Hugh, Benjamin Grosvenor and Boris Giltburg, and brought new collaborations, semi-staging Bluebeard's Castle in Village Underground, Shoreditch with director Lila Palmer, a project with a Syrian Oud player, and Britten's War Requiem in Cadogan Hall.
Orlando read music at Trinity College Cambridge where formative influences were the Wagner expert John Deathridge and Janáçek expert Paul Wingfield. He studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London where the principal teachers were Colin Metters, George Hurst, Colin Davis and the great Russian guru Ilya Musin.
Roger Coull
Roger Coull studied the violin at the Royal Academy of Music, where Chamber music was one of his great passions, and it was there that he formed the Coull Quartet under the guidance of Sidney Griller.
The Coull Quartet was appointed quartet-in-residence at the University of Warwick in 1977, where its members are still actively involved in its music making, and soon established itself as one of Britain’s leading string quartets. The Quartet performs regularly in concerts and radio broadcasts in Britain, Western Europe and the USA and has also toured India, the Far East, Middle East, South America and Australia. 2009 saw their first tour of mainland China, and more recently they have toured Brazil, Berlin and Poland. They were awarded a prestigious New Music 20×12 commission, with composer Joe Cutler, to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Roger’s route into conducting has come very much from the eyes and ears of a performer. As a string quartet leader of international standing he has always been used to interpreting music and every aspect of the process of turning a vision into performance.
His years of experience as an orchestral trainer and conductor gained through his work at the University of Warwick, the Tees Valley Youth Chamber Orchestra, and the String Orchestra course at the Canford Summer School of Music have led to many conducting invitations.
Principal conductor of the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, he is also a regular guest conductor of the Guernsey Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Beauchamp Sinfonietta, conductor of the University of Warwick String Orchestra, and a regular director of the Helix Ensemble. He has also conducted the Academy of St Thomas, and the Crendon Chamber Orchestra, amongst others.
Roger Coull also has much experience as a teacher, and has given many masterclasses internationally. He is a regular guest at Britain’s music colleges as teacher, examiner, and adjudicator and was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music for his services to professional music making.
Simon Walton
Simon Walton enjoys a highly successful and varied career as a conductor/director, performer, teacher, and coach.
He is perhaps unusual in having appeared as a conductor, singer and flautist on BBC Radio 3. He began conducting at an early age, and was selected to take part in a conducting masterclass with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, with whom he was principal flute. At university, he founded the Manchester University Mozart players and conducted the New Music Ensemble.
As well as the being the Musical Director for the Hampstead Chorus, he is currently the conductor and artistic director of the Amici Orchestra (London). Simon is committed to performing new music and is a founder member and regular conductor of the Vocal Constructivists, whose recent CD Walking Still has received outstanding reviews in the national press:
“This recording is fabulous… Everyone needs a disc of offbeat contemporary music on their shelves. Start with this one.” (theartsdesk.com)
“Walking Still tops my list of current releases” (International Record Review),
“Formed in 2011 the group has brought the exuberance and playfulness of experimental music to live audiences” (Independent on Sunday).
He has been invited as a guest artist, conductor and speaker by the English universities of Southampton, Christchurch Canterbury and King’s College London and internationally at Wesleyan University USA and the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Simon is a senior coach for the Grittleton summer residential adult chamber music courses, covering a wide repertoire from the western canon to contemporary music, specialising in music for mixed ensembles due to his experience as a multi-instrumentalist.
Simon is also active as a singer. He made his operatic debut in the role of Luigi (Il Tabarro) in 1996. Specialising in ‘lyrico spinto’ repertoire, other principal roles have included Turrido (Cavalleria Rusticana), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Macduff (Macbeth), Loge (Das Rheingold), Samson (Samson et Dalilah) and Florestan (Fidelio). He has appeared and recorded with Kent Nagano and the Opéra de Lyon, Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker and the choirs of the London Oratory and Westminster Abbey.
Simon has been invited to premiere two new operas, creating the role of Frank Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd by Andrew Downes, commissioned by the Hardy Society in 2006, and the role of Pierre Joubert in The Raffle by Richard Springate in 2011. Oratorio performances include Verdi’s Requiem, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In a broader musical context Simon has worked as a professional accompanist on the piano, an instrument on which he has also recorded Saint-Saëns Septet and performed Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto. In 1993 Simon was invited to write Young Musician Plays Flute (Watts Aladdin Books, London) as part of their education series, a flute teaching book which has since been translated into several languages.
Simon appeared as tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah in 2008, the first concert put on by the Hampstead Chorus.
Robert Salter
Robert Salter enjoys a varied and diverse performing career. After starting violin lessons aged eleven, he won full scholarships to study at Wells, and then with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he was a founding member of the Guildhall Strings. As Leader/Director of the Guildhall Strings throughout its 25 year existence, Robert has given concerts in the most prestigious concert halls throughout the world (Carnegie, Musikverein Vienna, Konzerthaus Berlin, Wigmore, Barbican etc ) often a soloist.
The ensemble recorded extensively with both RCA Red Seal and Hyperion Records, and broadcast numerous times on radio and television both in the UK and abroad. Robert Salter has appeared as a guest Leader with orchestras including the English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Bournemouth Sinfonietta and City of London Sinfonia, and currently is the Leader of the Garsington Opera Orchestra.
As a chamber musician Robert has appeared with the Nash Ensemble and Hausmusik (with whom he recorded the Schubert octet) and continues to be invited as a guest principal by the Philharmonia and Royal Opera House orchestras, and by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, of which he is a member.
Alongside his work as a performer, Robert is passionately interested in teaching the violin. He taught for a number of years at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, teaches privately and has recently returned to Wells in the role of visiting violin teacher at the Cathedral School.
Paul Barritt
Paul Barritt is permanent Guest Leader of the Halle Orchestra and is also leader of the Divertimento Ensemble. He has been leader of both the English Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfomia.
As a concerto soloist, Paul regularly appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Northern Sinfonia. Notable tours to France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain and the Caribbean, as well as in London and across Britain and Ireland, have achieved outstanding success.
Paul's discography also includes CDs of the violin works of Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Stanford, Albert Sammons, Rheinberger (Hyperion), Rozsa (Cloud 9), Schoeck (Guild) as well as chamber works by Mendelssohn and Bargiel (Hyperion), Mozart (Collins Classics), and Colin Matthews.
He is artistic director of a burgeoning chamber music series in West Hertfordshire, Tring Chamber Music.