Since 1925 the Farnham & Bourne Choral Society has been bringing choral music to Farnham. The choir was originally an offshoot of the Farnham & Bourne Music Club that was formed in 1922 to provide opportunities to see and hear professional musicians perform.
The choir performs the major choral repertoire and normally has three concerts a year at Farnham Maltings and St.Thomas-
The choir membership is around 80. We meet to rehearse every Wednesday evening (during school term time) between September and May at South Farnham School (Click here for Rehearsal Dates). We do not audition new members; all you need is enthusiasm, although we do hope you can sing! Basic understanding of music is a benefit, although not essential. We are very keen to encourage new members to learn the delights of collective singing for two hours a week.
Graham Ross - President
Graham Ross has established an exceptional reputation as a sought-after conductor and composer of a very broad range of repertoire. His performances around the world and his extensive discography have earned consistently high international praise, including a Diapason d’Or, Le Choix de France Musique, and a Gramophone Award nomination. In demand as a regular guest conductor in the UK and abroad, recent collaborations have included Ars Nova Copenhagen, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Aalborg Symfoniorkester, Aurora Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Vocal Ensemble, European Union Baroque Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, London Mozart Players, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Norwegian Wind Ensemble, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra, and Salomon Orchestra. He is co-founder and Principal Conductor of The Dmitri Ensemble and, since 2010, Director of Music and Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, where he conducts the internationally-renowned Choir.
He has conducted and recorded more than 100 world premières of a wide spectrum of composers, including Palestrina, James MacMillan, Judith Bingham, Giles Swayne, Vaughan Williams, Imogen Holst, Nico Muhly, Brett Dean, Lydia Kakabadse, Cecilia McDowall, Gabriel Jackson, Anna Semple, and Matthew Martin. He has conducted more than twenty-five albums and since 2011 he has recorded exclusively for Harmonia Mundi, including an acclaimed nine-album series of music for the church year, and composer-specific albums of Shostakovich, Imogen Holst, Pärt, Britten, and Palestrina. At the age of 25 he made his BBC Proms and Glyndebourne debuts, with other opera work taking him to Jerusalem, London, Aldeburgh and Provence.
As a composer commissions have included BBC Concert Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra, O Duo, Park Lane Group, The Prince Consort, Solstice Quartet, and Wigmore Hall. As an animateur and through outreach work he has conducted projects in Tower Hamlets, Wigmore Hall, English National Opera and Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and overseas in Nigeria, Palestine, across Europe and the USA. He is founder and Artistic Director of Singers Abroad, running annual courses for singers of all ages, and Artistic Director of Musique Cordiale International Festival in Provence. He is a regular contributor on BBC Radio, including as a recent guest presenter of Inside Music. In 2021 he was made an Honorary Fellow the University of Macau, where he was presented with a Half Moon Award for the Arts in 2019. He is a Trustee of the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music. He studied music at Clare College, Cambridge and conducting at the Royal College of Music, London.
Highlights for the 2024/25 season include performances with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Salomon Orchestra, Ars Nova Copenhagen, a BBC Radio 3 broadcast, and performances across Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Spain with the Choir of Clare College. As recipient of the Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute Musician in Residence, in January-February 2025 he travels south with the Royal Navy on board HMS Protector for a composition residency in Antarctica.
Ben de Souza - Musical Director
Ben de Souza is a British conductor, accordionist and singer.
He is the Founding Director of the choir at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and is currently Musical Director of Farnham & Bourne Choral Society and Newbury Chamber Choir, and is Director of Music at Earley St Peter’s Church, Reading. In 2023 he was appointed the first Musical Director of Godalming Choral Society’s Children’s Choir project. He has previously held posts with Taplow Children’s and Boys’ choirs, John Lewis Music Society and Finchley Children’s Music Group.
As a choral singer Ben has sung with the award-winning Taplow Youth Choir (Gillian Dibden MBE) and Magdalene College Chapel Choir, Cambridge (Graham Walker), and held a choral scholarship with King’s Voices, Cambridge (Ben Parry). He has recorded with several of the country’s finest choirs including the Gabrieli Consort (Paul McCreesh), the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge (Sir Stephen Cleobury), and VOCES8. Ben has studied singing with Alexander Ashworth and Richard Edgar-Wilson. His credits as a bass/baritone soloist include performances of Haydn’s The Creation, Jenkins’ The Armed Man, and Faure’s Requiem.
Ben holds an MMus in Choral Studies from Cambridge University, where he studied conducting with some of the world’s leading choral musicians including Stephen Layton, Graham Ross, Andrew Nethsingha and Sarah MacDonald. He now continues his conducting studies with Neil Ferris, and learns the organ with Simon Dinsdale.
Ben completed his undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music as a classical accordionist, studying with Owen Murray. He continues to have an active accordion playing career, especially with Duo Fisarco alongside violinist Chloë Meade. Ben currently holds accordion teaching positions at Salisbury Cathedral School, Eton College and The Purcell School.
When not involved in something musical Ben can be found volunteering at Didcot Railway Centre, building finescale model railways, or doing anything football-related.
www.bendesouzamusic.com
Diana Owen - Rehearsal Accompanist
Diana Owen was born in Farnham where her father, Harold Beeken, taught English at the Grammar School. She was a Junior Exhibitioner, an Associated Board Gold Medallist and Scholar at the Royal College of Music where she studied piano with Eric Harrison and Kendall Taylor, harpsichord with Millicent Silver, accompaniment skills with Hubert Dawkes and composition with Herbert Howells.
Her setting of Psalm 150, composed for the first Farnham Festival in 1961, was published by Novello and her new setting of the same psalm for mixed choir, two trumpets and organ was performed on 50th anniversary of the Festival in 2011.
She was the resident pianist and piano tutor at the University of Winchester from 1963 until her retirement in May 2017 where she performed regularly both as a soloist and accompanist and she has been the accompanist for the Farnham and Bourne Choral Society since November 2004. She was the soloist in the Society’s performance of Constant Lambert’s 'Rio Grande’ in 2014 and the acompanist in Rossini's 'Petite Messes Solonnelle' in 2015.
Andreana Chan - Conducting Assistant
Andreana Chan is currently Assistant Organist at St Mary Magdalene, Richmond, and a recent graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she read Law as Organ Scholar. A prizewinner at ARCO, she is also a violinist and pianist who achieved her LRSM diploma aged 17, performing regularly as a collaborative pianist, soloist and chamber musician. She currently holds positions as Assistant Accompanist of the English Chamber Choir, Conducting Assistant at Farnham & Bourne Choral Society, and is regularly engaged at St-Martin-in-the-Fields as accompanist of St Martin’s Voices.
She has performed as a soloist in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Reading Town Hall, St Bartholomew’s, New York; St John’s Smith Square, Salisbury Cathedral, Truro Cathedral and Leeds Cathedral. She was the organist on the first ever BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong broadcast from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and has also featured on Scala Radio, BBC One and ITV. She was Principal Accompanist of the 2023 Rodolfus Choral Course, where she played for a live BBC Radio 3 broadcast. Her recording credits include Heaven to Earth with London Voices (Signum Records) and several albums with Pembroke College Chapel Choir.
She is passionate about the role of music in the community, and regularly leads singing workshops in prisons with Sing Inside, a charity promoting rehabilitation and breaking social barriers.
