King's College Course
2017 Choral Services
Tuesday |
What is the King's College Course?
St. Stephen's Episcopal Pro-Cathedral and King's College of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania are the sites of the King's College Choir Training Course sponsored by the Royal School of Church Music in America. The course will be held from Monday, July 24 through Sunday, July 30. It is the largest of its kind in North America, attracting more than one hundred fifty singers of all ages from ten years and up. The singers come from all across the United States.
Dorm rooms, dining facilities, a chapel, and rehearsal spaces are provided King's College, and the choral services and concerts are held primarily at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral.
Both choristers and adults enjoy a week of music-making, fun, prayer and fellowship in the beautiful Wyoming Valley. Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Wilkes-Barre is a historic city on the east side of the Susquehanna River. King's College is within walking distance of downtown shopping, movies, riverfront parks, and historic churches.
2017 GUEST DIRECTOR: RICHARD TANNER
This year we are pleased to welcome Richard Tanner back as our guest music director. Richard became Director of Music at Rugby School, one of the UK's most prestigious and historic Public Schools, in September 2012, having previously been Director of Chapel Music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, based at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. Prior to that he spent 13 years as Director of Music at Blackburn Cathedral, where he ran one of the UK's busiest and most wide ranging Cathedral music programmes which not only provided high quality singing for the Cathedral's liturgy, but also extensive educational outreach to the local community.
Richard is also a Musical Director for BBC Radio 4 Daily Service and regularly works on a variety of other programmes for the BBC, including BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong and BBC 1 Songs of Praise. He has frequently conducted the Northern Chamber Orchestra in concerts, recordings and BBC Broadcasts (including three world premieres) and has also often collaborated with the period instrument ensemble, Canzona. He has given organ recitals and directed choral courses worldwide and has worked extensively as a record producer.
Richard was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Oxford University, where he read for a music degree and was organ scholar at Exeter College. After Oxford he spent a year as organ scholar at St Albans Cathedral before moving to All Saints' Northampton, where he was Director of Music for five years.
Richard is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. In 2008 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Guild of Church Musicians and in 2010 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, an award made to former students who have made a significant contribution to the music profession.