Directors and Staff
The Harrogate Festival Choral Course will be led by the highly experienced music team of John Dunford, Lynn Hudson and Thom Meredith. Sue Rosborough is Administrator.
John Dunford
John Dunford began his musical career as a treble in Birmingham Parish Church Choir. He continued his musical training at Trinity College of Music studying organ, singing, piano, harpsichord and conducting. In his final year he won the Choral Conducting prize and was appointed Senior Student of the college and he has worked at an International Music Festival in Rome with Arthur Oldham and Claudio Abbado.
Although he earns his living as a teacher (he has been Director of Music at Ashville College in Harrogate since 1991) he maintains an active professional musical career. He has played the organ for concerts and services in cathedrals in England and on the continent, accompanying services for the BBC World Service and in Television broadcasts.
John has been conductor of Wetherby Choral Society for fifteen years and ten years ago also took on the conductorship of Ripon Choral Society. He directs the highly acclaimed St Oswald Singers and was previously director of the New Westminster Chorus, Marlow Choral Society, and deputy or guest conductor of Sheffield Bach Society, Doncaster Choral Society, and Harrogate Philharmonic Orchestra.
John still sings professionally as a soloist with choral societies such as the Sheffield Bach Society and Sheffield Oratorio Chorus. Recent roles include the Evangelist in Bach's St John Passion, the title role in Britten's St Nicolas, and the extraordinary swan solo in Orff's Carmina Burana in performances in Harrogate and Ely.
Lynn Hudson
Lynn Hudson is a graduate of Leeds University, where she was awarded the Frank Toothill Memorial Prize for Music. She has worked extensively in music education, teaching, in various capacities, in schools in Leeds and serving, for many years, as Chair of Examiners for Music at Advanced Level for a major examining board. From 2001 - 2006 she was responsible for running the secondary music PGCE course at the University of Leeds. She still teaches part-time at Lawnswood School in Leeds and Rishworth School in Calderdale.
Throughout her career she has always been involved in vocal and choral work. Highlights include commissioning and conducting new works such as Robin Walker's chamber opera Odysseus and Penelope for Lawnswood School and Geoffrey Kinder's The Seven Ages of Man for Halifax Young Singers, forming the City of Leeds Youth Choir, and taking Opus 44, a female voice chamber choir which she conducted for twelve years, to considerable success in national competitions. She has conducted community choirs, run choral courses for both singers and conductors and adjudicated at music festivals in the Yorkshire area.
Lynn has been Music Director of Halifax Young Singers since 1995. The choir numbers around a hundred young people, aged from nine to twenty-one, who sing a wide repertoire of music, including full scale works such as the Rutter Requiem, Stainer's Crucifixion and The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins, and regularly achieve notable successes in the National Festival of Music for Youth.
Lynn is married to Thom Meredith and they have one son, Harry, who sings bass with Halifax Young Singers and plays percussion in Kirklees Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Thom Meredith
Thom Meredith began his involvement with music at an early age, singing with Leeds Youth Opera Group and then Leeds Youth Chorale. As a treble he performed many solo roles including the Shepherd Boy in Tosca (Opera North) and the boy soprano in George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (Ballet Rambert). He studied singing with Jean Allister and then Arthur Reckless at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Thom graduated from Brasenose College, University of Oxford, where he was awarded an Exhibition as conductor of the Chapel choir. Following a PGCE qualification from the University of Leeds he taught Music in schools including four years as Head of Music at Colne Valley High School, Huddersfield.
Thom's career involvement with young musicians continued when he joined the staff of Kirklees Music School in September 1999 as Assistant Principal. He was appointed Principal in 2004 and has continued to champion the cause of young people's music making over the years. Thom formed and conducts the Kirklees Youth Symphony Orchestra whose recent performances have included Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto (with John Lill); Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man; Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1.
As Musical Director of Colne Valley Male Voice Choir, a position he has held since 1989, Thom has enabled the choir to achieve musical standards which have taken them to unrivalled records of success. They have twice won the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and in May 2007 won the International Male Voice Choir competition at the Male Voice Choral Festival in Cornwall.
In addition to his passion for conducting, Thom has established a reputation as a baritone soloist and an arranger of music for female, male and mixed voice choirs. He has taken solo bass/baritone roles in a wide variety of concerts, operas and oratorios including first performances of contemporary works. Recent performances include: Carl Orff's Carmina Burana; Stainer's Crucifixion; Brahms' A German Requiem and Handel's Messiah.
Sue Rosborough
Sue is the Administrator of Harrogate Festival Choral Course and has worked in Arts Administration since 1992. Sue is volunteer Administrator of Halifax Young Singers, described by Dr Gordon Stewart as "one of the best youth choirs in Britain". Sue has sung in choirs since she was 8 years old.
Sue is a Business Studies graduate from Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University). She is married to Rob and has two daughters, Kate and Lauren, who enjoy their music. Both sing in Halifax Young Singers and Lauren is a percussionist in the National Children's Orchestra.