Our People
William Prideaux, director
“It gives me great pleasure supporting singers in developing their musical, vocal and performance skills. Whether a seven-year-old discovering choral singing for the first time through our youth choir or schools outreach work, or an adult singer refining their karaoke tones into competition-winning performances, the thrill of them achieving what they never imagined possible has given me enough smiles to last a lifetime!”
William Prideaux is the director of Peterborough Sings! and its three choirs Peterborough Male Voice Choir, Peterborough Voices, and Peterborough Community Chorus. He also leads the Arts Council England-funded schools’ singing strategy for Peterborough Music Hub.
William works extensively in the UK and internationally as a conductor, choral director and consultant. He studied as an undergraduate at Liverpool University, where he gained first-class honours for his work in orchestration, historical performance and Baroque editing. He was also awarded the Oxford University Press Prize for Music Editing. He went on to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied voice and choral conducting.
He is recognised nationally as a specialist in the equal voices genre and has acted as consultant to a number of choirs. He was a guest speaker at the 2011 International Male Voice Choir Symposium and gave the key-note address at the 2018 Association of British Choral Directors Male Choir Conference. He was invited to direct the 2018 Men of Song Choral Festival in Perth, Australia. In 2019 he adjudicated at the Mary Wakefield Westmorland Festival and the Bournemouth International Male Choir Competition.
As guest conductor he has directed the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Brighouse and Rastrick, Black Dyke and Grimethorpe Colliery Bands as well as the Central Band of the RAF. He has also worked with the King’s Singers, Lesley Garrett, Jon Boden, Blake and Bernie Nolan.
In 2011 William Prideaux received a special award from the distinguished judging panel of the Cornwall International Male Voice Choral Festival in recognition of his particular contribution to choral conducting, and in 2012 he was identified by Creative Peterborough as one of the city’s most influential people in the arts. In 2016 he received a Civic Award from Peterborough City Council for his outstanding contribution to arts and culture in the city. In 2022 he won the conductor’s prize at the Riga International Choral Competition, and was awarded an Interkultur scholarship for 2023. He has recently been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Our trustees
“The bringing together of a male, a female and a youth choir, plus most recently a mixed chorus, under one umbrella is unusual enough. To that add the exceptional level of performance that those groups achieve, the type and scope of concerts and competitions and other events that they participate in and the outstanding performance partners with which they have shared a stage: all of this makes for something which - if not actually unique - is quite out of the ordinary”
Mark Currier, former trustee
The work of Peterborough Sings! is supported by an experienced board of trustees with special responsibilities as follows:
John Hanby: chair of trustees
Sarah Morris: finance
Chris Pearman: general
Anna Welsford: administration
Lisa Hatfield: safeguarding
Alessandro Viale: artistic development
Bridget Pengelly: grants/bids
John Macaulay: general
“I’m excited to be in a position to help shape the music education opportunities we can offer Peterborough and the local area, and I would really like to see as many people from as many different walks of life as possible getting involved with the great work Peterborough Sings! does, from school singing days, to project choirs, or simply coming along to see a concert!”
The director and trustees of Peterborough Sings! are supported by two members of staff:
Jo Royle, business manager
jo.royle@peterboroughsings.org.uk
Claire Hailey, marketing manager
claire.hailey@peterboroughsings.org.uk