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Paul Webster

Paul Webster read Music as an Organ Scholar at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway, and subsequently won a scholarship to study Piano Accompaniment at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama. [Since then, he has pursued a career of rich diversity as festival director, conductor and chorus master, repetiteur, composer, arranger, and teacher of composition.] He has worked with established singers such as Willard White and Teresa Cahill, continues to work regularly as coach and accompanist with students, with voice teachers Laura Sarti and Rita Godfrey, and is [now in his twentieth year as] accompanist for the BBC Symphony Chorus. Paul has a particular interest in 20th century repertoire, having conducted his own group, the Orpheus Ensemble, at the Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall, St John's Smith Square and on BBC Radio 3, where he has also broadcast with the BBC Singers. In 1987 he conducted a new production of Peter Maxwell Davies's The Martyrdom of St Magnus for Opera Factory/London Sinfonietta. Paul has appeared at the Huddersfield Festival of Contemporary Music and Glasgow's Musica Nova. He has worked as repetiteur at Opéra Bastille in Paris, and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and assisted the ‘cellist Rostropovich in the preparation of a number of new concertos. In the sphere of amateur music-making, Paul has enjoyed a long and fruitful association with the pupils and teachers of the London Suzuki Group, for whom he has written a number of pieces; and in 1980 [he became musical director of NOMOS, an ensemble specializing in 20th century music, at the invitation of its members. In the same year,] he was invited to become conductor of Morley College Choir – a position he held for over 10 years – initiating an association with the College which has since encompassed commitments as teacher of composition and occasional lecturer, and continues to this day with current activities there as conductor and accompanist.

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