Musical Direction

Harry Sever - Music Director

BBC Music Magazine ‘Rising Star’ conductor Harry Sever is fast developing a wide-ranging repertoire and a fluency in both operatic and orchestral style.

A finalist in both the LSO’s Donatella Flick and the Athens International Conducting Competitions, he is currently the Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow at Longborough Festival Opera.

Recent engagements include Carmen (Opera North), Siegfried (Den Ny Opera and Longborough), The Fairy Queen (Longborough) Fantasio (Garsington), La Traviata (Opera Holland Park), Cendrillon (Bampton Classical Opera), The Nutcracker (Peter Schaufuss Ballet), concerts with the orchestra of Welsh National Opera and recordings with the orchestra of Opera North.

As an assistant conductor and member of music staff, Harry has worked with Scottish Opera, English National Opera, the Royal Danish Opera, Den Jyske Opera (Danish National Opera), Garsington, Opera Holland Park, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Grange Festival, and the Britten Sinfonia at Sadler’s Wells.

His education work has included projects with The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, The Royal Opera Academy, Copenhagen, British Youth Opera, Birmingham Conservatoire and Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

A composer for stage and screen, Harry’s shows Mr Men & Little Miss, James and the Giant Peach and Guess How Much I Love You have toured internationally. For the theatre, scores include The Kreutzer Sonata (Arcola Theatre), Sleeping Beauty and My Mother Said I Never Should (The Theatre Chipping Norton), King Lear, As You Like It, Love’s Labours Lost (The Minack Theatre); for television, Stalker (CBS); for the radio, Rossum’s Universal Robots (BBC Radio 4).

Harry studied at the Queen’s College, Oxford and trained at the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

 

Lucy Hollins - Principal Guest Conductor

Lucy is a conductor, presenter, writer and animateur. She is Creative Director of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra’s Junior and Senior Choirs, Associate Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus, a vocal leader for Music of Life, Creative Lead for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Young Creatives project, Principal Guest Conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic, a conducting tutor for the Association of British Choral Directors, and Conductor of CBSO SO Vocal. 

A leading expert in music education and engagement, Lucy is passionate about opening up opportunities for everyone to experience the transformative powers of making music together, regardless of their age, background or level of experience. She presents schools and family concerts for London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Cambridge Philharmonic and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Lucy is proud to be co-author of How To Make Your Choir Sound Awesome with Suzzie Vango, published by Banks Music in October 2022. 

Tom Primrose - Chorus Master

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Tom Primrose is a British conductor, accompanist and coach, particularly known for his work in the field of vocal music.  He now works principally in opera, and his freelance work takes him all over the world, including the Palais Garnier and the Bastille with Opéra National de Paris, Opéra de Montecarlo, Det Kongelige Teater og Kapel in Copenhagen, Polish National Opera, Korea National Opera, and the Mariinsky in St Petersburg.  

In the UK he has also worked for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the Grange Festival, Shadwell Opera, Opera Holland Park, and Opera South.  He has assisted and chorusmastered for a host of conductors including Susanna Mälkki, Richard Egarr, David Parry, Finnigan Downie Dear, Francesco Cilluffo, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Jean-Luc Tingaud, and most recently assisting Alexander Soddy preparing the music for Deborah Warner’s acclaimed production of Peter Grimes at the Palais Garnier.  He is on the music staff at Grange Festival Opera where he is currently chorusmaster.  He returns to Paris again in September.

He has strong connections with Norfolk where he is Artistic Co-Director of the Southrepps Music Festival, conducts choirs at the University of East Anglia, and acted for a time as Assistant Organist and Director of the Girls’ Choir at Norwich Cathedral.  Amongst a host of other freelance work, he is also chorusmaster of the Newbury Festival and the Cambridge Philharmonic.

Tom is also an acclaimed piano accompanist, and has performed in many of the UK’s principal concert halls and festivals, on BBC television and radio, and has collaborated with leading singers and instrumentalists including Ben Johnson, Ellie Laugharne, Jonathan McGovern, Christina Gansch, Sophie Bevan, Mary Bevan, Susanna Hurrell, Ruby Hughes, Ema Nikolovska, Claire Barnett-Jones, Michael Chance, Jose Maria del Monaco, Katherine Jenkins, Javier Camerena, Corrine Winters, Jonathan Bloxham, Ben Baker, Eloise Fleur Thom, Jenifer Pike, amongst many others.

Tom studied musicology at the University of Oxford with Robert Saxton, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Michael Dussek and Malcolm Martineau, during which time he won multiple prizes including the Webb Award, the Dennis Horner Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and the Rosenblatt Accompanists’ Prize.

Paula Muldoon - Orchestra Leader

Image Credit: The Willcox Collective
Paula Muldoon is a violinist, software engineer, and composer based in Cambridge, UK. The leader of the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra since 2017 and a Lead Software Engineer at Zopa Bank, she thrives on the intersection of music and programming.
 
As leader of the Cambridge Philharmonic, Paula’s interpretation of the solo part to Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldeneben was lauded as having “impressive sensitivity”. Paula enjoys guest leading other orchestras in East Anglia; highlights include performing the solo violin part to Scheherezade with the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra.
 
Paula loves teaching both violin and programming. Her violin lessons focus on breath, effective practising, and historically informed bow usage. Much of her programming teaching comes via volunteering with her community MusiCoders, which she founded in 2020 to help musicians transitioning from performing to software careers.
 
Paula is a former member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and subsequently spent several years living in London and performing with ensembles including the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, along with conductors such as Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Marin Alsop, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Highlights of her musical career include guest leading the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra in China, recordings at Abbey Road Studios, and performances at Carnegie Hall.
 
Paula has composed music for solo violin, string quartet, and string trio – you can hear her play her own piece, Get Outside, on Spotify and iTunes. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (MMus 2012) and the University of Michigan (B.M. 2010), studying with Detlef Hahn and Aaron Berofsky, and received her programming training at Makers Academy in London in 2017. 
 
While at the University of Michigan, she won the Undergraduate Award for Classics Translation and was a semi-finalist in the prestigious Hopwood writing competition. She is also one of WeAreTechWomen’s 100 Women in Tech and was named to the Computer Weekly Women in Software Power List in 2019 and 2020. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, crotcheting, yoga, cryptic crosswords, gardening, Star Trek, being involved with the Cambridge Ukrainian community, and playing with her Cockapoo.