Lawes Baroque Players, St. Albans Cathedral Girls Choir, Marko Sever, & Tom Winpenny
Biography Lawes Baroque Players, St. Albans Cathedral Girls Choir, Marko Sever, & Tom Winpenny
The Lawes Baroque Players
is a Hertfordshire-based period instrument ensemble that was formed in 2004 by Miles Golding to satisfy the need of choirs in St Albans and Harpenden for a high-quality, professional period instrument ensemble to support their concerts. The ensemble’s reputation quickly spread, and it was invited to play at the St Albans International Organ Festival, and appear with choirs further afield in London and Oxford.
The players share many years of knowledge and practice in the field of historically informed performance, and are well known in the UK and abroad for their work in this field, as teachers, solo players, and members of internationally celebrated ensembles, both on recordings and on the concert platform.
St Albans Chamber Choir
has been a major contributor to the musical life of the St Albans area and further afield for 60 years, delighting audiences with music from the last six centuries and winning awards for its innovative programming.
This extensive repertoire and a cappella performances are the Choir’s hallmarks, and under the direction of its inspirational Musical Director John Gibbons BEM, the Choir continues to explore new repertoire, often bringing its audience little known compositions ranging from modern performances of early works to new commissions from contemporary composers such as Jonathan Rathbone, Tarik O’Regan and Alexander L’Estrange, whose sixtieth anniversary commission, The Prophet, was performed by the choir In February 2019.
In April 2019, the Choir celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its international choral association with the Wormser Kantorei from St Albans’ twin town Worms in southern Germany. The two choirs meet and perform together every two years alternately in St Albans and in Worms. In April, the joint choirs performed a Golden Jubilee concert in St Albans Abbey.
The Choir is also a member of the St Albans St Cecilia Festival Society, and on 12 October 2019 will be performing a major concert in St Albans Abbey featuring Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with fellow members Radlett Choral Society, The Hardynge Choir and St Albans Symphony Orchestra.
The Choir continues to strive for the highest standards of performance, working with professional soloists and ensembles, notably with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the Choir’s 50th Anniversary Concert in 2009 and the Magna Carta concert in 2013.
Two critically acclaimed CDs are available, and the Choir took part in a film made for BBC TV during the summer of 2009.
The choir is delighted to have acclaimed British composer Will Todd as its President.
St Albans Chamber Choir is a registered charity number 280876 and is affiliated to Making Music (The National Federation of Music Societies). It gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from the Williams Church Music Trust.
Tom Winpenny
is Assistant Master of the Music at St Albans Cathedral where his duties include accompanying the daily choral services and directing the acclaimed Cathedral Girls Choir. Previously, he was Sub-Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, and during this time he performed with the Cathedral Choir at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, performed in Mahler's Symphony no. 8 with Valery Gergiev and the LSO, and played for many great state occasions. He has broadcast regularly on BBC Radio and regularly featured on American Public Media's Pipedreams. He is also Musical Director of the London Pro Arte Choir.
He began organ lessons under John Scott Whiteley while a chorister at York Minster, and continued as a Music Scholar at Eton College under Alastair Sampson. After holding the post of Organ Scholar at Worcester Cathedral and then St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he was for three years Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in music. With the Choir of King's College, he gave concerts in the USA, Hong Kong and throughout Europe, in addition to appearing as their accompanist on CD releases on EMI Classics.
He has taken part in the first performance of works by Judith Weir, Cecilia McDowall, Judith Bingham, Carl Rütti, Jonathan Dove, Paul Mealor, Francis Grier, Alec Roth and Francis Pott. He has studied with Thomas Trotter and Johannes Geffert, and won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Miami International Organ Competition.
In recent years he has given recitals in Grace Cathedral (San Francisco), Birmingham Town Hall, Salisbury Cathedral, Trinity Cathedral (Phoenix), Hildesheim Cathedral (Germany) and Kristiansand Cathedral (Norway). He has also featured as organ soloist in John Rutter’s Christmas celebration concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and recently performed Francis Pott's monumental organ symphony Christus.
His many solo organ recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s cycles L’Ascension and La Nativité du Seigneur (Naxos), discs of music by Peter Racine Fricker, Malcolm Williamson and John Joubert (Toccata Classics), music by Lennox and Michael Berkeley, John McCabe and Charles Villiers Stanford (Resonus Classics), and music by Judith Bingham (Naxos). His recordings of Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux/Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue (Naxos) were each awarded five-star reviews both in Choir and Organ magazine (the magazine's Star Choice for Livre d'Orgue) and in the French journal Diapason.
