CHILTERN CHAMBER CHOIR
ADRIAN DAVIS
Founder of the Chiltern Chamber Choir
Adrian Davis hails from Wiltshire, and most of his life he has been involved in music education, first as the Director of Music in a Grammar School and Parish Church in Torquay in Devon and later, for twenty-four years, at Berkhamsted School. Since 1997 he has been Director of Music at St Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted, and the Director of Bridgewater Sinfonia since its foundation (as the Bridgewater Band) in 1998.
Adrian was awarded a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music, where he studied composition with Edmund Rubbra and the organ with Nicholas Danby and Harold Dexter. During this period he deputised at Southwark Cathedral on occasions, and won the Augustus Mann Prize for organ.He is the Founder and Conductor of the Chiltern Chamber Choir which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, and with whom he has given over 300 concerts in the UK and in several countries of Europe.
He has been the guest conductor of the Madrid Bach Choir, directing performances of major choral works by Bach and Handel in Madrid, Zaragoza and Seville, including recordings for Spanish Television. He has also been Guest Conductor with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir in Berlin and Leipzig as part of the Mendelssohnfest. With St Peter’s Church Choir he has made recordings, and directed concerts in Cathedrals and Palaces on tours to Venice, Santiago de Compostela and Vienna.
Since 1976 Adrian has been an Examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, for whom he has travelled worldwide. In 1987 he was elected to a Fellowship at Keble College, Oxford to engage in a study of 18th century vocal practices.
He continues to compose music for various occasions, including a special setting of the Prayer of St Francis for Chiltern Chamber Choir to sing in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, and in 2016 a very moving piece for the choir to sing while on tour in France, in memory of the victims of the then very recent Nice terror attack.
Adrian recently received a Berkhamsted Civic Award for his services to music, both here in the community and as an ambassador for English musical traditions abroad.