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Music Director: Chris Dixon
We are delighted to announce that we have appointed a new MD, Chris Dixon, who will be starting with us in January 2024. Chris comes to us with masses of choral conducting experience, both with children’s and adult choirs. Moreover, he has sung in some of our most prestigious performance venues: Glyndebourne, the Royal Albert Hall and Cardiff’s Millennium Centre. Next year, he is staging the inaugural Eastbourne International Singing Competition so clearly, a man with vision. We look forward to the choir moving in exciting new directions.
A photo will follow shortly.
Deputy Music Director: Veronica Fewkes
Veronica is an accomplished choral director, orchestral conductor and teacher with over forty years’ wide experience, working mostly with young students as well as adult musicians. She was lucky enough to be introduced to choral Renaissance polyphony from the tender age of ten in the Medway Catholic Choir, which began a rich and rewarding journey in developing a deep knowledge and love of choral singing and direction. By the age of seventeen, she was directing her local church choir and her school’s junior orchestra. Much of Veronica’s career in education has been focused on the teaching of music in the complete range of the 11-18 curriculum. Her work has also involved the direction of extensive and hugely successful musical performance programmes, working with students on demanding orchestral, concerto, choral and music theatre repertoire. Veronica taught at Benenden School in Kent for nine years, where she was Assistant Director of Music. She then joined the Music department at Roedean, Brighton, where she worked for twenty-nine years, retiring from her position as Director of Music in July 2021. Veronica joined the altos of Seaford Choral Society in January 2022 and has been very happy to assist the society as Interim Music Director. She is looking forward to handing on the baton (pun intended) in the New Year.
Accompanist: John Eady
John accompanies the choir during rehearsals and concerts. With Veronica and himself in charge, every rehearsal is a pleasure. John studied music at King’s College, London, the Royal Academy of Music and the cello at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Stefan Popov. In 2002 he started to learn the organ with Anne Marsden Thomas at St Giles International Organ School and in 2006 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. He is currently a freelance cellist and organist, manages his string quartet named Four Strings Attached. He has also been a visiting instrumental and theory teacher at Eastbourne College, Battle Abbey School and Lancing College. Since 2008 he has been organist at St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge. In 2012 he won a competition at St Paul’s Cathedral with his Pentecost anthem Veni Sancte Spiritus and in 2013 won a further composition competition at Lincoln Cathedral with his eight-part Latin Responsory.
Deputy Accompanist: Heather Morton
Committee Officers:
Chair
Alison Mowbray
Treasurer
Rick Wiles
Secretary/Deputy Chair
Steve Machan
Committee Members:
Rowena Reeve – Minutes Secretary
Ralph Wood – Librarian
Carole Josey – Concert Manager
Veronica Fewkes – Interim MD
Diane Callender – Deputy Concert Manager
Simon Foster – Website
Also ex officio:
Jonathan Chappell – Technical
