Musical Director

Jeremy Backhouse is one of Britain's leading choral conductors and in January 2009 took up the post of Musical Director of the Salisbury Community Choir. Jeremy began his musical career in Canterbury Cathedral where he was Senior Chorister, and later studied music at Liverpool University. He spent five years as Music Editor at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, where he was responsible for the transcription of print music into Braille. In 1986 he joined EMI Records as a Literary Editor, and from April 1990 combined his work as a Consultant Editor for EMI Classics and later Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers with his career as a freelance conductor.

As conductor of the Vasari Singers, the Vivace Chorus and Wooburn Singers, Jeremy has toured extensively, recorded and broadcast on BBC Radios 3 and 4. Jeremy has been conductor of the BBC Club Choir and the Kent Youth Choir, and has worked with many other choirs, including the BBC Singers, Trinity College of Music Choir and Chamber Choir, the Brighton Festival Chorus (preparing for Carl Davies), the London Choral Society/the London Chorus (preparing for Ron Corp) and the Philharmonia Chorus (preparing for Sir Colin Davies and Leonard Slatkin).

Jeremy and his family live in Alderbury, just outside Salisbury. On taking up his appointment as Musical Director of Salisbury Community Choir, he said, "I am very much looking forward to working with the SCC and building on the incredible achievements made under Fiona Clarke. The choir has a deservedly high reputation for its adventurous attitude to its concert life and I relish the challenge of further developing that ambitious outlook by continuing to perform repertoire that will appeal to all areas of the community and beyond."

For further details of "one of the most exciting choral conductors of his generation", visit Jeremy's website www.jeremybackhouse.com.