Led by Matthew Hamilton, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir is one of the best sound bodies of the North, devoting itself to a varied and interesting program of choral music.

During the never ending covid lockdowns only non live music in small groups was allowed. This is when and why we founded another mixed ensemble with four professional singers. The videos are very indicative of the time - i.e. we still had to learn videography and get proper equipment...

The last project I did before three years of Covid Lockdowns prohibited most music making in my home country, was with the wonderful Kat Dunkelbunt, who specialises in getting a new arrangement written and putting together a group of people to record and film on project basis.

The Vocoder Ensemble is the second long time ensemble I have worked with, being a funding member as bass. With this ensemble we had the honour to be invited to the Kings Singer's masterclass in Lübeck in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcO4d_0FfWI

The Ensemble d'accord I founded with fellow students from the Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater Hamburg to have a consort of singers with whom to do various and varied future projects while all building up on the same idea of sound. Therefore one of the first things we did together was to actually start with a course of Stephen Connolly. With a number of the eight members I sang together in various different formations and that idea did come to fruition. One of our altos now has made career on the world stage by having been invited to join the renowned and wonderful Calmus Ensemble.

Before going on to study music I was continually trying to max out what I could do in the amateur music scene. The pinnacle of this was gigging with the Cuori Ensemble under Eva Hage with whom I won prices in choir competitions including a special price in Old Music.

I had the honour to be singing with the Schleswig Holstein Festival Chor under Nicola Fink and to be granted a bass solo (decan) in the Chrysostomos Liturgy by Rachmaninoff which was transmitted in the NDR.

My first church choir on "Cathedral level" was the Chor St Michaelis in Hamburg, where I also had the honour to give the last respects to former chancellor Helmuth Schmidt. Apart from that I enjoyed learning the major repertoire works for a choir like this - Brahms Requiem, the Bach Passions, Mendelssohn's Elijah and of course the Christmas Oratorio which basically financed the rest of the year with three days of marathon singing (I-III, III-VI, I-III per day).

Although my range has not significantly changed and I started singing bass in the school choir, in my early twenties I was mostly employed as a tenor. During the first years of university, when I sang in the Collegium Musicum I was then invited to sing with the group "die sINGer Aachen" as their counter tenor. The ING is written in capitals as all "Sänger" were engineers. Now most of those members are dads, so the "humour" finally fits. I sang with this group until it disbanded when most people left town after their studies and continued to specialise as counter tenor until my late 20s. With this group solo singing and ensemble singing literally started. That all singers were engineers or IT people and therefore very versed in project organisation made this ensemble one of the easiest to work with.