Who’s who

The singers

David Ogden Conductor

David Ogden is a professional conductor and composer. He conducts Exultate Singers, City of Bristol Choir, choirs at Arval and Airbus, and in his post of Head of the Bristol Choral Centre, he conducts the Bristol Youth Choirs. He is Director of Music at Holy Trinity Church, Westbury-on-Trym.

David studied conducting with George Hurst, Norman Del Mar, Michael Rose and Adrian Leaper, and choral conducting with Simon Johnson, Laszlo Heltay and Peter Erdei.

For over 25 years he has worked with numerous professional and amateur groups of all shapes and sizes in many fields of music making, including church music, concerts, musical theatre and opera, community projects, primary and secondary level educational workshops, from small children’s groups to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted over 100 large-scale choral works including first performances of pieces by Shostakovich, Roxanna Panufnik, Francis Grier, Thomas Hewitt Jones, James Whitbourn and David Bednall. He has made 15 CD recordings and directed choirs in numerous cathedrals, churches and concert halls in 16 European countries and in the USA, Philippines, and South Korea. 

David has conducted choirs on BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the World Service, and worked as conductor, arranger and music adviser for over 20 years on BBC TV’s Songs of Praise. He is Religious Music Adviser for the BBC’s hit series Call The Midwife, and worked with the Royal Mail Choir in the BBC Two series The Choir: Sing While You Work. 

His compositions are published by the RSCM and White Light Publishing, and are performed in schools and churches worldwide. His music is broadcast frequently on BBC radio and television. In Bristol, he has written songs and directed choirs for the opening of Cabot Circus, the MShed Museum, BBC Food & Farming Awards and the refurbishment of Bristol Old Vic. 

In October 2015 David was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal School of Church Music in recognition of his service and contribution to choral music and the RSCM over many years.

www.davidogden.co.uk

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Jenna Brown – Vocal Coach

Jenna Brown is an experienced choral vocal coach, singing teacher and voice rehabilitation specialist. She runs Bristol Voice Care, providing rehabilitation, vocal massage, teaching and coaching for professional and amateur individuals and groups. Jenna trained as a classical mezzo-soprano, starting as a Cathedral chorister, before being awarded a scholarship to study classical voice at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She was a choral scholar at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge whilst reading Theology and followed this with teacher training and an MSc at Oxford. As a voice teacher, she holds an MA in Voice Pedagogy and numerous professional qualifications. She continues to perform in concert, oratorio and recital, whilst managing a busy international work portfolio with clients including professional singers from across all genres. She has a growing reputation for providing person-centred care and coaching for musical theatre performers and actors touring to the Bristol Old Vic, Bristol Beacon and the Bristol Hippodrome, as well as supporting classical singers, and award-winning pop vocalists. Jenna is recognised for her work in vocal research and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a council member for the UK Association of Teachers of Singing (AOTOS), and a tutor for Vocal Health Education’s Certificate of inclusive Teaching and ESTA/University of Chichester’s Postgraduate singing teaching qualifications.

She is currently a doctoral researcher at The Institute of Education, University College London, researching the synthesis of imagery and voice science in singing pedagogy. Her recent peer review publications on voice and choral pedagogy have been included in the Journal of Voice, The Voice and Speech Review, and Australian Voice among others. She is a writer for Music Teacher Magazine, publishing resources on singing in schools and vocal health. Jenna regularly presents her research at international conferences and is often engaged as a speaker and workshop leader for educational and corporate organisations. If you are interested in Jenna’s research or working with her please visit www.bristolvoicecare.co.uk

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Roxanna Panufnik – Patron

Roxanna Panufnik is one of the most versatile and beloved British composers working today. She studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music and since then has written works for opera, ballet, choirs, orchestras and chamber music as well as for film and television that are seen and heard around the world. Thanks to her hybrid heritage, she has a great love of music from a variety of cultures and different faiths. Her mission to build musical bridges between the three Abrahamic faiths has resulted in commissions from The World Orchestra for Peace in Jerusalem and the BBC for the 2018 Last Night of the Proms.

Roxanna’s 50th birthday year saw some exciting commissions and premieres. As well as the Proms, the oratorio Faithful Journey – a Mass for Poland for City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Poland, marked Poland’s centenary as an independent state. Recent commissions include Across the Line of Dreams, premiered by Marin Alsop awith the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Ever Us commissioned by the Rundfunkchor Berlin, for 10 choirs and symphony orchestra, to premiere in 2024/25. Her operas, Silver Birch and Dalia commissioned by Garsington Opera received audience and critical acclaim.

She was commissioned by King Charles III to write Coronation Sanctus for his Coronation in May 2023, and an orchestration of this was premiered at the Last Night of the Proms.

Roxanna is Associate Composer with the London Mozart Players and Composer-in-Residence with VOCES8, who premiered and co-commissioned Floral Tribute with the BBC Proms, this year.

 Her works are published by Peters Edition Ltd and recorded on many labels including Signum, Decca, Warner Classics, Chandos, and EMI Classics. 

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Dr Toby Young – Patron

Toby Young is a composer of operas, chamber and symphonic works whose influences range from plainchant to electronic dance music. Born in London in 1990, he studied composition with Robin Holloway at Cambridge, whilst also being a choral scholar in the prestigious King’s College Chapel Choir. He has won the Guardian / BBC Proms Young Composer of the Year competition, the International ABRSM Composition Competition and the ISM Composition Competition.

Toby’s diverse output has included a setting of William Blake for the London Mozart Players, several songs for the urban music duo Chase & Status (2013), a solo Fantasy (2015) for cellist Guy Johnston, and dance piece for Rambert (2015) combining a live DJ with multi-tracked mezzo-soprano. He has had a particularly close relationship with London Symphony Orchestra, writing several orchestra works as a Panufnik scholar (2009-11) and the chamber opera Daisy Chain (2012) for the Soundhub scheme.

Toby has considerable experience writing for choirs, with works including carols, part-songs, Music, Make (2016) for the combined choirs of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, arrangements of Prince songs for The King’s Singers, and choral arrangements for The Rolling Stones, which he performed live with the band at Wembley Arena and Glastonbury (2013).

Recent large-scale works include the 30-minute Shakespeare Cantata (2016), a set of Breath Madrigals (2016) inspired by medical research, a chamber opera remix of Handel entitled The Choice (2015), and The Art of Dancing (2016), a dance-music inspired double concerto for trumpet and piano.

Toby is also active as a researcher, exploring the relationship between creative practice and philosophy in his work as the inaugural Gianturco Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford. He frequently gives public talks about this work, including a recent TEDx talk for the University of Arts London (2016) and a panel discussion at Milton Hall for the Incorporated Society of Musicians.

He also works as a curator and artistic consultant, advising on exhibitions at STORE Contemporary, Berlin (2016), Pizza Pavillion, Venice (2015), Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (2015), and Cornell University (2014). Toby is a trustee of the Royal Society of Musicians, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Society of Arts. In January 2020, Toby was appointed Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and he became Patron of Exultate Singers in 2019.

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Dr Jill White – Patron

The singer, BBC producer and former Director of the National Youth Orchestra, Dr Jill White became Exultate Singers’ first ever Patron in 2015.

Jill has an impressive track record, having produced over 2,000 BBC TV and radio programmes, producing many of John Rutter’s CDs including a Gramophone Award-winning album, establishing ‘BBC Young Musician of the Year’, working with St George’s Bristol in its early days positioning it as a first-class broadcasting chamber music venue, and working with many festivals, organisations and ensembles nationwide. She has been honoured by the University of Bristol, the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music, the Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal Society of Arts, the Worshipful Company of Musicians and the Polish Composers’ Union and she is a Freeman of the City of London.