President                    Iain Burnside

Chairman Paul Spicer

Paul is best known as a choral conductor. He conducted Bach Choirs in Chester and Leicester before moving in 1992 to the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Whitehall Choir in London. He taught at the Royal College of Music1995 to 2008 and now teaches choral conducting at the Birmingham Conservatoire and at Oxford University.

Until 2001 Paul was Artistic Director of the Lichfield International Arts Festival and the Abbotsholme Arts Society, posts he relinquished in order to pursue a freelance musical career. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 in the Midlands until 1990.

Paul Spicer's large-scale Easter Oratorio was recognised by Gramophone Magazine as 'the best of its kind to have appeared ... since Howells's Hymnus Paradisi.' The Deciduous Cross, for choir and winds, based on five poems by RS Thomas (2003), was recently recorded by the Whitehall Choir. A recording of his complete works for organ was recently released from Truro Cathedral. A recording of his shorter choral works was released in 2009.

Paul's biography of Herbert Howells (Paul's teacher at the Royal College of Music) was published in 1998 and has been reprinted twice. He is presently working on a biography and study of the music of Sir George Dyson and also on a new large-scale choral and orchestral work, an Advent Oratorio, to a libretto by Dr. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham. Besides these major projects, each July he runs a choral course/Arts Festival called the English Choral Experience at Abbey Dore in the Golden Valley of Herefordshire (www.englishchoralexperience.co.uk).

Paul Spicer is a member of the Council of Lichfield Cathedral, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Research Fellow of Birmingham University, an Honorary Fellow of Birmingham Conservatoire, a Trustee of the Finzi Trust, Vice-President of the Herbert Howells Society, and Advisor to the Sir George Dyson Trust.

Vice-Chairman Jim Page

Jim Page spent most of his teaching life at Bromsgrove School, finishing as Head of the Lower School. Since retirement he has been busy in various spheres of the literary and musical world. He started Bromsgrove Concerts in 1963 and was at the heart of that organisation for thirty-six years. He has been Chairman of the Housman Society for over twenty years and joined Finzi Friends in 1993. For Finzi Friends he is the Administrator for the Ludlow Weekend of English Song, which was first held in 2001 and is in charge of the Sales Stall. His awareness of Finzi began in his thirties but he also has a passionate interest in much other music especially the operas of Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Janacek and Britten, though it is in Beethoven's quartets that he finds the ultimate listening experience

Journal Editor   Rolf Jordan

Rolf Jordan is an artist and designer based near Liverpool. His art includes a series of portrait busts created in 2000-02, and the solo exhibition of oil paintings and ink drawings entitled 'Inspired by English Music', held in Ludlow during 2007. He is currently engaged in freelance art projects. Listening to music has always played an important part in his non-musician's life, and he has taken a close interest in British music since discovering the works of Vaughan Williams and 'exploring in all directions from there'. He has enjoyed writing articles for The RVW Society Journal, The Maud Powell Signature, British Music, The Ivor Gurney Society Journal, and was Editor of the Ivor Gurney Society Newsletter from 2002-7. He was editor and designer of the Gerald and Joy Finzi anthology The Clock of the Years, and is now editor of the Finzi Journal. In 2008, he was the recipient of a Finzi Trust Scholarship, and is currently preparing a book on the results of his research. www.rolfjordan.com

Secretary Jane Rigby

Jane Rigby was born near Stourbridge, attending Stourbridge Girls' High School and played violin and latterly double bass in the Worcestershire County Youth Orchestra. Having obtained a degree in music from Sheffield University, where she took up singing, she trained as a teacher. Singing was put aside as she attempted to inspire large groups of children and convince them that music was fun and not just an excuse to sit and gossip. While living in Portsmouth in the early 1980s she started music groups for the under fives, which flourished and continued even when she came back to the Midlands. She now lives in rural Warwickshire, has gained a Guildhall Diploma in Singing Teaching and for fifteen years has taught singing at King's High School in Warwick. Now she teaches singing at home, performs as often as she is able and for many years has been secretary of the local centre of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. She is the Vocal Secretary of the Leamington Spa Competitive Festival and finds herself organising many musical events in the village and nearby.

Treasurer Emma Lowery

Emma is a Chartered Tax Adviser working for a small firm of accountants in Swindon advising on all aspects of the UK tax system. In her spare time she plays the Oboe and Cor Anglais and is currently oboist with Keynesham Orchestra. She has played with a number of orchestras and solo performances have included Correlli's Oboe Concerto with string orchestra. She is a member of Bristol Cathedral Chamber Choir and also enjoys playing the piano, designing and making jewellery.

Martin Bussey

Martin Bussey is active as composer, singer and conductor in a wide variety of fields. His songs and choral music are reaching a growing audience, with recent performances on BBC Radio 3 of works written for the BBC Pilgrim Consort and frequent performances of settings of English poets such as Gurney, Hardy and Emily Bronte. He was for fourteen years head of Academic Music at Chetham's School of Music and continues to be conductor of Chetham's Chorus and Chamber Choir working regularly with conductors such as Paul McCreesh, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Jac van Steen. He has directed Chester Bach Singers for twenty-one years, with English Choral music a core ingredient of concerts. He sings regularly with the choir of Manchester Cathedral and teaches singing at Manchester University.

Sophie Cleobury

Sophie studied music at Birmingham University, graduating with a BMus (Hons) in 2004. She went on to research Herbert Howells' evening canticle settings, for which she gained an MPhil in Musicology in 2005.

Whilst at University, Sophie enjoyed the behind-the-scenes organisation of a great number of musical events; namely as Chairman of the Summer Festival Opera production in 2004 and then as Chairman of the Summer Festival of Music in 2005. As a performer, Sophie sang with the Birmingham University Singers, the Ex Cathedra Vocal Academy and the Birmingham Oratory Choir.

Moving to London, Sophie spent 3 years as Planning Coordinator at the National Opera Studio, and now works at the Royal Opera House as Artistic Administrator in the Opera development wing of ROH2. She enjoys singing in her spare time with various church choirs and ensembles. Possessing a great love of English music of the 20th Century, she is delighted to be a member of the Finzi Friends Committee.

Philip Lancaster

Philip Lancaster is building a reputation as a freelance researcher, writer and lecturer, specialising in early 20th century British music. Philip is currently undertaking a research degree, working closely with the Ivor Gurney Estate in the preparation of a critical edition of songs and other works by Ivor Gurney. The early results of this editorial work have been performed, issued on CD, broadcast on Radio 3, and are shortly to be published. Philip's ground-breaking catalogue of Gurney's musical works was published in December 2006. He is also preparing a biography of composer and critic W. Denis Browne. In 2007 he launched a new British arts publishing house, 'The Chosen Press' www.chosen-arts.org.uk Philip is Bass Lay Vicar Choral at Lichfield Cathedral.

Martin Lee-Browne

Martin Lee-Browne's life so far has been very musically oriented, despite spending his working life as a solicitor and a part-time soldier, and he and his wife have musical children. As a schoolboy, Martin was taught by GF's friend John Russell (who gave the f.p. of Eclogue), and through the latter became a percussion (and very occasionally [rehearsals only] timps) player in the Newbury String Players in 1950-1951. Herbert (John) Sumsion and his wife Alice were great friends of his parents, and Martin consequently had contact with Gerald Finzi at the 1950 and 1953 Gloucester Three Choirs Festivals. At Cambridge he sang with the University Madrigal Society (not the Chamber Choir) under Boris Ord (including the 1954 Proms performance of A Garland for The Queen).

Martin has sung in choirs since he was an undergraduate - for many years with the Three Choirs Festival, still with the St Endellion Festival, and occasionally with the London Philharmonic Choir. He was the Chairman of the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival between 1998 and 1992 (and hence for the memorable 2001 Festival of entirely English music), and is still a member of the TCF Association. He has written a biography of his grandfather Frederic Austin; he researches into, and writes articles on, English music c.1900-1940 ; and he edits the Delius Society Journal.

Jennie McGregor-Smith

Jennie McGregor-Smith has spent most of her life working either professionally or voluntarily for charitable bodies, most of them in the arts. After 25 years with Bromsgrove Concerts promoting chamber music, with an emphasis on unusual repertoire and new work, she is now retired. However, not being able to get rid of the promoting bug, she currently puts on summer vocal concerts in Tardebigge Church, trying to help raise awareness of the pleasures of English Song.

She became a Finzi Friend in 1984 in time for the second of the triennial weekends of English Music, and more recently has very much enjoyed being on the committee and part of the team organising the Ludlow weekends of song. In 2002 she published a biographical study of a Bromsgrove Victorian architect, and in 2008 published a book on the Victorian expansion of Bromsgrove. She is the Victorian Society caseworker for the Bromsgrove area. Recreation is opera of the Britten, Janacek, Strauss variety, chamber music, theatre, concerts and gardening