Alan Tavener

Alan Tavener's professional life has been dedicated to the promotion of singing on every level from, at one extreme, the encouragement of complete beginners to try out their voices in public workshops to, at the other, the direction of one of Britain's most distinctive and original professional vocal ensembles.

Alan began learning the piano at the age of six, moving on to the organ once his legs were long enough to reach the pedals. As a boy he also played the oboe and began his singing career as a treble chorister in Bath where he grew up. He moved to Scotland in 1980 to take up the post of Director of Music at the University of Strathclyde, having read music at Oxford University, where he was awarded the Heberden Organ Scholarship to Brasenose College. Whilst a student, he formed and trained several choirs and ensembles, began a mini music festival in his college, and sang in the Schola Cantorum of Oxford and the London Chorale. He studied organ with Nicholas Danby, gaining ARCM and ARCO diplomas, and conducting with George Hurst.

In 1982, with his wife Rebecca, he co-founded the award-winning, professional vocal ensemble Cappella Nova, with which he has made ten CD recordings (including eight on the celebrated early music label: ASV Gaudeamus), principally of historic and contemporary Scottish choral music, as well as directing an annual public concert series around Scotland, and touring abroad on many occasions, mostly in Europe (including Russia), and the USA.

Alan has made a speciality of conducting the work of the 16th century Scottish composer, Robert Carver (whose Mass 'L'Homme armé' he first came across in an old Hungarian edition in a box on a second-hand stall in Oxford). Carver's wonderful decorative and eccentric works are featured on five of Cappella Nova's CDs. Alan and Rebecca are also at the forefront of experiments in performance practice for Medieval Scottish plainchant and polyphony, collaborating with a wide network of outstanding musicologists around the world. Alan has also conducted some fifty world premieres of choral works, ranging from 3-minute a cappella items to major works including John Tavener's 'Resurrection' with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and James MacMillan's 'Seven Last Words' with the BT Scottish Ensemble, subsequently broadcasting the form of seven films on BBC2.

As Director of Music at the University of Strathclyde, he combines teaching and the promotion of a professional concerts series with the direction of a wide range of student choirs, orchestras and ensembles. He helped design the University's BA Applied Music degree and contributes to the teaching of this increasingly successful and popular course. With the various choirs and ensembles of the University of Strathclyde he has toured many times in Europe, performing either in their own right or in collaborations such as 'Judas Maccabaeus' (Handel), performed with the Nürnberg Bachorkester in Germany. His University Chamber Choir has recently toured in Spain and has just recorded a debut CD of Scottish romantic part-songs (including the premiere recording of several Victorian works) and good quality, original settings of Robert Burns.

Since 1980, he has also been Organist and Choirmaster of Jordanhill Parish Church in Glasgow where, in 1996, he formed the Jordanhill Community Choir as a way of fulfilling a popular desire amongst local people to sing without having to make a formal church and/or time commitment. In addition to his regular choral conducting commitments, he also undertakes a considerable amount of ad hoc work with other established choirs - ranging from children's choirs to chamber choirs - and with other groups from community choirs to one-off choral workshops. Alan also directs specialist workshops for organisations such as the Early Music Forum of Scotland and, with Rebecca, he directs an extremely popular public workshop series under the aegis of Cappella Nova.

Alan does manage to find some time for fun in spite of all this busy music-making and teaching. He enjoys food and wine, especially all things Italian (and particularly consuming them actually in Italy, if possible). He relishes detective stories, both as novels and TV cop shows (driving Rebecca mad with old episodes of 'Columbo'). Word-games, awful puns and 'malapropisms' delight him, and he has an abiding interest in industrial and domestic architecture. If he ever retires, he's promised Rebecca that he will learn to cook ....