 Geoffrey HortonÂ
Choir leader
Geoffrey Horton trained with Dennis Wicks, Ramon Remedios, Lyndon Vander Pump and Hilary Fisher. He graduated from London University with a degree in music and education and undertook postgraduate studies at the Mayer Lismann Opera Centre. He has since graduated with distinction from the University of Southampton with a M.Mus degree in Music Performance.
Geoffrey’s music career spans some forty years and has taken him to everything from musical theatre to opera, oratorio to cabaret and light entertainment to pantomime. Equally at home on the stage or concert platform he has performed in everything from large theatres and concert halls, stately homes and cottages and village halls and tents. His oratorio performances have included venues in Spain and Italy singing the bass solos in the Requiems of Mozart and Faure. In the UK, he has sung the bass solos in Messiah, The Creation, Solemn Vespers, St. Cecilia Mass, Puccini’s Messa Di Gloria, Brahm’s Requiem to name just a few.
His charity work has included performances at the Ascot racecourse for Cancer Research where he met Roy Castle’s wife and sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and also the Bobby Moore Cancer Foundation in London.
He has also, somehow, found the time to teach singing and brass (he plays the French Horn) using the Associated Board, Trinity College and London College of Music syllabuses from Grade 1 to diploma level.
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Neil Sissons
Accompanist
Our accompanist is Neil Sissons, who studied piano, organ and electronic composition at The Royal College of Music in London, subsequently gaining an organ scholarship to Oxford University, where he read Music. Since then he has had a very varied musical career, including:
Repetiteuring Batignano Festival, the BBC Three “Flashmob” Operas
Accompanying Purcell Room, lieder with Stephen Varcoe, Official Accompanist of the
Oxford Music Festival for more than 40 years
Teaching Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Sylvia Young School, piano in
Dorset schools
Lecturing Popular Music and Music Technology, South Thames College London
Conducting The Oxford Playhouse, Paisiello’s “Nina” for the Oxford University
Opera Club. Abbey Road Studios for “Scream 3” and Adidas advert.
The Soviet State Symphony Orchestra of Cinematography in Moscow)
Composing ITV holiday programme “Getaways”, Edinburgh Festival “Sundance”
Playing at Ronnie Scott’s Club in Soho.
He is currently organist of St. Peter’s; Parish Church of Bournemouth and lives in Kings Stag and is the author of “Read Music from Scratch” published by Boosey&Hawkes.