ORA Singers prides itself on working with some of the world finest choral composers and music educators this country has to offer. Handpicked from our 49 commissioned composers, each competition, 5 composers are assigned as mentors to the young composers and will, between them, be supporting 10 emerging new choral composers!
The 2022 Competition mentors are:
The 2022 Mentoring team
JANET WHEELER
Composer and conductor Janet Wheeler works with choirs in Saffron Walden and Cambridge. She read music at Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway, before a career in secondary music followed by eight years as music producer for BBC Schools Radio. Now a busy choral conductor whose choirs include Granta Chorale and Saffron Walden Choral Society, she is also much in demand as a choral composer, writing music from small a capella pieces to choral/orchestral works, all informed by her strong response to the rhythms and meanings of texts.
Her larger works include Sea Tongue (2004), Magnificat Cum Angelis (2012), The Ceaseless Round of Circling Planets, commissioned for the 2016 Thaxted Festival, and I Sing and Ever Shall from the same year, commissioned by Southampton Philharmonic Choir. Wheeler conducts the second performance of this in March in Saffron Hall. Commissions from 2017 included Songs and Visions of Joy for Psallite Women’s Choir, And Then We Knew Peace and A Poison Tree for Farnham Youth Choir, and a commemorative choral cycle Gather the Good Days, commissioned as a companion piece to her earlier cycle Time Becomes a Song.
Choirs performing Wheeler’s music include Gloucester Cathedral Choir and I Fagiolini (both in broadcasts on Radio 3), the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, National Youth Choir of Wales, University of London Chamber Choir, Imperial College Choir, Chandos Chamber Choir and many more.
Her recent competition successes include the Friends of Cathedral Music Diamond Jubilee Introit Competition in 2016 and the Hendrix Carol Competition 2017. She is currently working on music for NYCGB with percussionists O Duo.
KEN BURTON
Ken Burton is an international choral and orchestral conductor, singer and instrumentalist, composer, arranger, trainer, educator, judge, and presenter.He read music at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London where he completed his Bachelor of Music in 1991 and continued with further professional studies in Voice Education. His training and education was in the field of Classical music, and he is widely known for his versatility, ability to bring different genres together, and musicianship skills for which he has won awards.
As a Composer And Arranger Burton has several choral volumes published by major music publishers, including the best selling Feel The Spirit (Faber Music) and Christmas Spirituals For Choirs (Oxford University Press); his music, both original and arranged, is performed by choirs across the world. He arranges extensively for BBC Songs Of Praise and a large number of other programmes. Among these programmes is The X Factor, where he did choral arrangements for songs for One Direction, Robbie Williams, Christina Aguilera, will.i.am, and Rihanna. He has also done broadcast arrangements for Ruby Turner, Mica Paris, Beverly Knight, Ruthie Henshall, Heather Small, Lesley
Garrett, Sir Willard White, and US artists Donnie McClurkin, Kym Mazelle, and Gregory Porter.
He worked with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber on styling an arrangement of the song Love Never Dies for US singer Nicole Scherzinger. He has also been commissioned on several occasions, writing works for The Choir Of St Johns College, Cambridge, Hereford Three Choirs Festival, Aldeburgh Music Festival, among others
KIM PORTER
Kim is one of ORA Singers' treasured altos, as well as a wonderful composer. This unique perspective makes Kim an excellent choice for a tutor! As a postgraduate composer at Manchester University Kim wrote music for the drama department’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Büchner’s Woyzeck, The House of Bernarda Alba by Lorca and composed the score for an Open University BBC TV programme about melodrama. She joined the BBC Singers as an alto and was commissioned by the BBC to write a cantata, The Ballad Of Bethnal Green, for the Singers and school choirs in the East End of London.
Kim was commissioned by ORA Singers in 2016 to write a reflection on the plainchant antiphon, Pulchra es et decora. Kim's reflection will feature on an upcoming album release.
INTERVIEW WITH KIM
How did you get in to composing?
From quite a young age I used to write songs which I inflicted on my relatives for their birthdays and anniversaries, often setting beautiful poems written by my grandfather. I wrote a carol while I was at school, which I entered for the Nationwide TV Carol Contest. It sunk without trace unfortunately, but I remember my mum trying to record me singing it in the kitchen of our farm with three of my friends. We got terrible giggles, the crosser she got the more we laughed. It took us hours!
What do you do in your spare time?
I live in County Durham and walking is a big part of our lives here. It is a really beautiful bit of the world to be in. I often try to pace through a composition that I'm working on as I walk, like Peter Maxwell Davies used to do. But unlike him, I usually end up thinking about food and recipes and what I'd like to create in the kitchen instead. No discipline at all!
RICHARD ALLAIN
Richard Allain's works encompass a wide range of styles, including music theatre, sacred choral music, song-writing and works for children. He has worked with many of the country’s leading choirs and musicians and choral music is at the heart of his output; he was, for many years, Composer in Association for the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. Deeply committed to music education, together with his brother Thomas, Allain has written several cantatas for young voices. One such collaboration, Jake and the Right Genie was commissioned by the Surrey Millennium Youth Festival. It has since been performed by over 10,000 school children and, in 2005, an entire Yorkshire village!
Richard was commissioned by ORA Singers in 2015 for a reflection on Thomas Tallis', Videte Miraculum. His piece features on ORA's third album release, Many are the Wonders. Listen below for an idea of Richard's compositional style!
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD
How did you get into composing?
I guess I have always created music in some way…
+ Read more
Some of my earliest memories are of playing single notes on the piano. I remember discovering ‘thirds’ and thinking they sounded wonderful, before discovering ‘tenths’ and thinking they sounded even better. By my teens I was writing short chamber and vocal pieces, but in isolation and with no tuition of any kind. When I applied for university, I felt confident enough to submit a portfolio in the hope of studying composition seriously as part of my degree, but I didn’t enjoy this aspect of the course and, by the end of it, I was disheartened by the whole thing. I spent the next four years writing and experimenting, again in isolation, but with nothing much to show for it. I then studied to become a teacher and it was a couple of years afterwards that I began to find my voice as composer. I wrote my first serious piece Salve Regina when I was twenty seven, and it sat in a drawer for the next three years before it was premiered.
Do you have a particular process that you follow in composing? Are you systematic or sporadic?!
A piece begins as a collection of sounds in my head, each with a different sonic signature to it. The job of composition is to decipher those sounds, work out if they're worth pursuing or not, and somehow transfer them to the page. It can happen from sitting for hours at a desk or a piano, or it can happen driving through town, on a quick lunch break, or in the middle of the night - basically, at any time. I rarely find it easy, and I often re-work pieces for sometime after I have ‘finished’ them.
HARRY ESCOTT
Born in London, Harry Escott’s musical education began as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral before going on to complete his studies at The Royal College of Music and Somerville College, Oxford University, studying composition under Robert Sherlaw-Johnson and Francis Pott.
Harry Escott first came to prominence in 2005 with his score to the influential psychological horror film Hard Candy. Since then, Harry has worked with such stellar directorial talents as Michael Winterbottom (on both A Mighty Heart and The Road To Guantanamo), Nick Broomfield (Ghosts), and 2014 Oscar winner Steve McQueen (Shame).
In 2015 Harry scored the feature film, Damascus Cover, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and John Hurt, having also recently completed The Face of an Angel for director Michael Winterbottom and The Selfish Giant, a contemporary adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s short story directed by Clio Barnard. He has also composed music for several major television series, ranging from historical drama New Worlds to Abi Morgan’s contemporary cop show River starring Stellan Skarsgård.
In recent years Escott has revisited his roots, writing a large-scale choral work, O Viridissima Virga, for the Choir of St Bride's Church, London, critically acclaimed in The Observer as "a stunning new piece for choir" that "feels as though it's been in the repertoire for years."