About Bob
BOB CHILCOTT has enjoyed a lifelong association with choral music, as a chorister and choral scholar in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and as a member of the King’s Singers. He became a full-time composer and conductor in 1997, and has composed a large catalogue of choral music which is published by Oxford University Press. Bob has directed choirs in more than 30 countries world- wide and conducts many thousands of amateur singers in a continuing series of Singing Days. Since 2002 he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers and since 2019 Principal Conductor of Birmingham University Singers.
His music has been widely recorded by leading British choirs and groups including The King’s Singers, King’s College, Cambridge, Wells Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, The Sixteen, Tenebrae, The BBC Singers, The Bach Choir, Commotio, and Ora. Circlesong, recorded by the Houston chamber Choir and Treble Choir of Houston, was released by Signum in January 2022, and his second disc with NFM Wroclaw, Canticles of Light, in January 2023. Later in 2023 will see the release of Christmas Oratorio recorded by The Choir of Merton College, Oxford on Delphian and Mary, Mother by St Martin’s Voices on Resonus.
About Charles
CHARLES BENNETT is a lyrical poet whose gifts of vivid imagery and musical imagina- tion redefine our relationship with the natural world. He has published 11 books, of which the most recent is Cloud River, set in the landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens.
After leaving school at 16 he worked for 14 years before receiving an unconditional offer to attend London University. Whilst there he won a scholarship to study in America, where Seamus Heaney was his tutor. Following completion of a PhD, he taught for a time before establishing Ledbury Poetry Festival, then moved on to initiate and lead the BA in Creative Writing at the University of Northampton. In the last decade, his work with choral composer Bob Chilcott has seen him hailed as a mesmerising librettist. Currently, he is serenely re- tired with his wife, daughter and dog