Ronald Corp, Festival Director
Ronald Corp is Founder and Artistic Director of the New London Orchestra and New London Children's Choir, and Musical Director of the London Chorus and Highgate Choral Society.
He began conducting full-time in 1988 when he founded the New London Orchestra. With the Orchestra he has appeared in all the main London venues and at major festivals around the country. The Orchestra has a gained an excellent reputation for its innovative programming and for its acclaimed recordings on Hyperion, and Ronald Corp has made it his mission to breathe new life into a wealth of little known music from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as commissioning many new works. An exciting new partnership between the New London Orchestra and University College London was launched in December 2001. The New London Orchestra is now the resident orchestra at the UCL Bloomsbury, and performs concerts at the theatre as well as being involved with outreach and research projects with the theatre and the University.
Corp's engagements have included concerts with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Orchestra the Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels Radio and Television Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Bournemouth Sinfonietta. He also works regularly with the BBC Singers, and at the BBC Promenade Concerts, where he has conducted the 'Family Prom', and the 'Children's Prom'.
The New London Children's Choir is one of the busiest and most successful youth choirs in the country. Ronald Corp has conducted the choir in numerous concerts, recordings and a television workshop as part of the Young Musician of the Year. The choir's other engagements have included the premieres of works by Andriessen with the London Sinfonietta, performances at the Proms, soundtracks including Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and concerts and recordings with all the major London orchestras and for the BBC.
Ronald Corp is also a composer and his first major choral work And All the Trumpets Sounded was premiered in 1989 by Highgate Choral Society, who commissioned it, and is published by Stainer and Bell. His cantata Laudamus was premiered at St. John's, Smith Square in 1994 by the London Choral Society to great critical acclaim and its third performance was given at a Gala concert in the Royal Festival Hall. Sainsbury's commissioned him to compose a piece for the Farnham Youth Choir, winners in their section of the Sainsbury Choir of the Year Competition. Four Elizabethan Lyrics is published by the Oxford University Press, for whom Ronald Corp is also editing a series of publications for upper voices. Future conducting engagements include Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, Berlioz' Grande messe de morts at St Paul's Cathedral, and works by Stanford for Hyperion records with the NLO.
Recent compositions include Cornucopia, a major choral work for children's choir and orchestra (1997), Piano Concerto (1997), the cantatas A New Song (1999), Mary's Song (2001) and Adonai Echad (The Lord is One) (2001) In May 2003 the Highgate Choral Society premiered the Missa San Marco in St Mark's, Venice. Other works include song cycles Flower of Cities and Miscellanie and future projects include an orchestra (work for the Guernsey Camerata and a large scale cantata Waters of Time to be performed in Wells Cathedral in 2004.
An expert in choral training and choral repertory, Ronald Corp's comprehensive reference book entitled, The Choral Singer's Companion has been recently republished in a second edition.
