Joanna Forbes Lestrange
Biography Joanna Forbes Lestrange
Joanna Forbes
is a London-based professional musician with 25 years of experience in contemporary vocal music as a singer, composer and choir director. I love my work and I’m lucky that it’s given me the opportunity to travel all over the world. After graduating with a Master of Arts degree in Music from Oxford University, I joined the five-time Grammy® Award-winning vocal group, The Swingles, as soprano and Musical Director. I now enjoy a varied career performing, recording, composing and directing contemporary vocal music.
I’m the third generation of professional musicians in my family - my grandfather, Watson Forbes, was a viola player and my father Sebastian Forbes is a composer and university music professor - so I grew up with music all around me. My husband Alexander L’Estrange is a composer and multi-instrumentalist and our two teenage sons love music too. Stay at Home - family lockdown video
Whether you’re looking for a crossover soloist for your concert or a workshop for your choir or maybe you need me to record a piece you’ve written or you’d like to commission me to write a piece, you’ve come to the right place. I look forward to making music with you.
Ben Parry
Parry’s compositions and arrangements include the popular Faber Carol Book and a burgeoning catalogue of choral music for Peters Edition and Oxford University Press. He has enjoyed commissions from, among others, St John’s College, Cambridge, The Cathedral Choral Society of Washington DC, VOCES8, the BBC Singers, Chelmsford, Ely, Norwich and Worcester cathedrals, and his music has been heard at the BBC Proms and on the TV and radio. Ben studied Music and History of Art at Cambridge University, and was a member of King’s College Choir. In the mid-1980s he joined The Swingle Singers as a singer, arranger and music director, toured globally and performed with some of the world’s greatest musicians including Stephane Grappelli, Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio. Moving to Edinburgh in 1995, he co-founded the Dunedin Consort, which has gone on to establish itself as Scotland’s premiere Baroque ensemble. He also took up posts as Director of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, Director of Choral Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and conductor of Haddo House Opera. He moved back to England in 2003, becoming Director of Music at St. Paul’s School, London, then of Junior Academy at the Royal Academy of Music, and subsequently his current position as Artistic Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. As co-director of London Voices he has performed in major concert houses around the world as well as conducting many major film soundtracks including Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and Avengers. Ben is Assistant Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, where he is responsible for the mixed choir, King’s Voices. He is also Music Director of Aldeburgh Voices, the resident choir at Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
As an orchestral conductor he has worked with the Academy of Ancient Music, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Seville Royal Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony, London Philharmonic and BBC Concert Orchestras. Ben features on the credits of well over 100 recordings, appearing variously as singer, conductor, co- director, director, producer, chorus master and composer.
