Sir David Willcocks
Paul Leddington Wright
Nielson & Young
Jonathan Willcocks and John Rutter
Elwyn Raymer

Sir David Willcocks Sir David Willcocks has been a conductor at the International Church Music Festival since 1984. He began his musical training as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, later winning scholarships to Clifton College and King’s College, Cambridge.

After a five-year period of military service, he was elected a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and Conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society. Subsequently he became Organist of Salisbury Cathedral, and later Worcester Cathedral, conducting at the Three Choirs Festival. From 1950 to 1957, he was Director of Music at King’s College Cambridge, University Lecturer and Conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society. From 1974 to 1984 he was Director of the Royal College of Music, London. He served as the Musical Director of the London Bach Choir from 1960 until 1998.

Under his direction, The Bach Choir, King’s College Choir, and the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir have made many recordings of great choral works with England’s leading orchestras. He was knighted by the Queen in 1977 and has received honorary degrees in the USA and Canada, as well as from the Universities of Bradford, Bristol, Exeter, Leicester, and Sussex in the United Kingdom. In 2005 he was awarded the prestigious Sanford Medal from Yale University in America.

Paul Leddington Wright Paul Leddington Wright started his conducting career at the age of 15 when he held his first church post as Organist and Choirmaster, and was appointed conductor of the Maidenhead Schools’ Orchestra.

At the age of 15 he was the youngest person ever to have played the organ at London’s Royal Albert Hall in public, and two years later made his first organ recital tour to the USA, Canada, and Jamaica. At 17, Paul won an organ scholarship to St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where his tutors included Peter Hurford, Peter Le Huray, and David Willcocks. After leaving university, he spent three years working in the professional theatre in London’s West End and continued to make annual organ recital tours abroad.

In 1984, Paul was appointed Organist and Director of Music at Coventry Cathedral, a post he held for eleven years. In this capacity, he hosted the ICMF for the first time at Coventry in 1985, and six years later became Artistic Director for the ICMF. Since 1986, he has worked for BBC Radio and Television as a conductor and arranger and, in 1995, he went part-time at Coventry Cathedral retaining the position of Associate Director of Music in order to pursue a growing career with the BBC. He travels to the USA and Europe several times a year conducting and giving recitals and choral workshops and, in December of 2007, was guest conductor for Christmas at Belmont, recorded in Nashville’s new Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and later broadcast on PBS television on Christmas Eve.

As a composer, he completes several commissioned works every year and his music is published by Oxford, Mayhew, Shawnee Press, Hinshaw Music, and Hal Leonard Corporation. Paul has completed 25 years as conductor of the Saint Michael’s Singers – Coventry Cathedral’s Choral Society and, in addition to giving many concerts every year, the choir has recorded extensively, broadcasts every year for the BBC and, they are to record another album for the Kingsway Musicmakers series later this year. In September (2008), Paul will again conduct the ‘Big Sing’ in the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Songs of Praise.

Jonathan Willcocks and John Rutter have both served with Sir David as Co-Conductors for three of the annual Festivals.

Nielson & Young Now in the 37th year of a musical collaboration that continues to take them around the world, duo-pianists and Steinway Artists Stephen Nielson & Ovid Young are veterans of concerts in a fascinating array of venues. Those performance sites have ranged from Copenhagen, Denmark’s Tivoli Concert Hall; Toronto, Canada’s Roy Thompson Hall; Madras, India’s Academy of Music; Moscow, Russia’s Kremlin and Tchaikovsky Hall; England’s Coventry and Chester Cathedrals; Oberammergau, Germany’s Passionstheater; Berne, Switzerland’s Konzerthaus, Jerusalem’s Pavilion, Dallas’ Meyerson Symphony Center, Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and Ft. Worth’s Bass Performance Hall – to many hundreds of churches and university auditoriums, appearing by themselves or with symphony orchestras, from coast to coast in the United States and abroad.
Their concerto repertoire includes major works of Bach, Mozart, Saint-Saens, Poulenc, Gershwin, and Malcolm Arnold.

On the artistic staff of the International Church Music Festival since 1985, Ovid and Stephen have been active church music leaders throughout their careers. Mr. Nielson was recently named to the faculty of the Cliburn Institute at Ft. Worth’s Texas Christian University. In 2007, Mr. Young was appointed Artist-in- Residence on the School of Music faculty at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois.

Individually and jointly, they are widely-published composers of music for solo and multiple keyboards, choir and orchestra. Nielson & Young’s extensive discography includes many recordings from the classical repertoire as well as from the ever-expanding output of their signature hymn tune arrangements, many settings of which are for two pianos and orchestra. Visit the Nielson & Young Web Site.

Elwyn Raymer has served as the Executive Director of the Festival since its inception in 1984, while also serving between 1990 and 2001 as Vice President of the Gospel Music Division for BMG Music Publishing. In addition, Raymer is the President and CEO for the Church Music Publishers Association Action Fund, an organization dedicated to representing intellectual property rights for writers and publishers. Mr. Raymer is also President of his own company, FestCorps, Inc. the organization that plans and executes the annual Festival in Coventry, England, Bern, Switzerland, Chester, England and Rome, Italy.

The initial dream for the International Church Music Festival was not that of a choir competition, but rather an international opportunity for church and community musicians to go to beautiful and historic settings to rehearse and perform with Europe's outstanding orchestras under the leadership of world-class conductors/clinicians.

The goal was to create customized European Tours for American adult choirs, bringing the choirs together with other choral groups from many different countries, for four days of musical and cultural experiences they could not duplicate at home. This combining of North American musicians with talented participants from all over Europe and beyond has fostered deep and lasting international friendships.