About My Practice

I am a choral composer, song leader and workshop practitioner based in Brighton, UK. For almost three decades I’ve been creating and directing vocal projects that bring people together – from site-responsive performances and participatory song cycles to workplace choirs, theatre collaborations and community-driven commissions. I also design and lead bespoke vocal projects for festivals, arts organisations and cultural institutions across the UK and internationally.

My work is rooted in the belief that singing is a birthright: a deeply human, accessible and transformative act that builds connection, celebrates diversity and creates change. This ethos underpins my long-standing leadership of inclusive choirs – including Hullabaloo Quire, Raise the Roof, Hubbub Song Hub and UpRoar! – known for their creative diversity, rich harmony, fun factor and genre-defying repertoire.

Composition and Collaborative Work

Composition is a core part of my practice, often developed collaboratively with communities, writers, heritage organisations and artists. This work ranges from creating original songs and choral works for theatre, broadcast and live performance, to site-specific commissions and co-created heritage projects.

Examples include co-created composing for Brighton Festival (The Big Song with Heathcote Williams and Brainfruit), writing and workshopping for History Works (Cycle of Songs, Listening Lions and Holocaust Memorial Day events), and commissioned pieces including For Everyone, Forever, composed for the National Trust, and Raise Your Banners High – the Barking and Dagenham Women’s Anthem – with folk singer Lucy Ward in partnership with Studio 3 Arts.

Choral Song Cycles and Dramaturgy

My work in choral dramaturgy has grown out of a long-standing practice of creating large-scale choral song cycles – immersive works that weave together narrative, place, theme and community voice. Early projects such as It’s About Time, The Four Directions, Journey Songs and Unsung explored how song could move beyond concert performance into something more theatrical, atmospheric and story-driven.

I was also the rehearsal and choir director for several large-scale Brighton Festival promenade projects, including Souterrain (Kneehigh Theatre, Brighton Festival), Depart (Circa, Brighton Festival) and The Arms of Sleep (The Voice Project, Brighton Festival).

These song cycles laid the groundwork for my shift into choral theatre – collaborative, multi-disciplinary works that integrate song with movement, spoken word, visual design and audience experience – and ultimately into choral dramaturgy, which now forms a central strand of my creative leadership, focusing on the integration of choral composition and performance into theatrical narrative and storytelling.

This strand of my practice includes regular collaborations with theatre companies such as Brighton People’s Theatre and Third Space Theatre, composing and directing music for devised productions including Tighten Our Belts, Born and Bread, Pandora, Medea and Let It Be a Tale. These co-created works fuse vocal soundscapes with movement, myth and contemporary theatre-making to create powerful, multi-layered performance experiences.

My interest in the relationship between song, story and spoken word has also informed my own project Bards & Ballads, which explores how narrative, politics and poetry can be embodied and reimagined through collective multi-disciplinary performance.

Song as Social Change

I am a passionate advocate for song as a tool for social justice, activism and creative resistance. My recent solo project The Revolution Will Be Harmonised – a songbook of protest works inspired by writers and activists from Jo Cox, Billy Bragg and the Say Her Name movement to poets including Emily Dickinson and Allen Ginsberg – reflects this strand of my practice and continues to grow through workshops and performances in the UK and beyond. These songs can now be found individually in my shop, as can older songs from my first songbook, Soulstorm.

Research and Archival Engagement

My work increasingly bridges creative practice with research, exploring how participatory vocal projects can engage with archives, amplify underrepresented histories and reimagine collective memory through song. This approach informs my collaborations with heritage organisations, universities and cultural partners, and shapes the future direction of my practice.

Global Perspectives

Global perspectives are also central to my work. Collaborations with choirs, artists and cultural practitioners abroad – including projects presented at the Pan-African Creative Exchange in South Africa – have deepened my commitment to post-colonial approaches, collaborative methodologies and the reimagining of traditional forms in contemporary contexts.

Community and the Natural Voice

As a founding member of the Natural Voice Network, I champion singing as a fundamental community practice: one that requires no audition or formal training, but instead celebrates the expressive potential of every voice.