CHORAL COURSE 1: ROYAL HOLLOWAY
Friday 26th July - Friday 2nd August 2024
Fee: £1075* - BURSARIES AVAILABLE
Ralph Allwood MBE DMus was for 26 years Director of Music at Eton College and is now a freelance choral director, teacher and conductor. He is the Director of the Rodolfus (ex-Eton) Choral Courses, which he founded in 1980. He co-founded the Junior Choral Courses in 2012. Ten thousand 8 to 20 year-olds have since been students on courses. In recent years he has launched courses in Texas, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The Rodolfus choir has produced over 20 CDs since he founded it in 1982.
Ralph is co-founder and conductor of Inner Voices, made up of singers from state schools in London. He was until recently a Supervisor for harmony at Jesus College and Queens’ College, Cambridge, Director of the only conservatoire chapel choir in the world, the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir and an Honorary Fellow of University College, Durham.
Ralph has conducted choirs for over 40 broadcasts for BBC Radio 3. He has composed much music for Extreme Music Ltd, heard worldwide on radio, films and television. He teaches at his old grammar school, Tiffin and is a co-founder of the National Youth Music Theatre.
In 2015 he co-founded the Pimlico Musical Foundation to enable children from Pimlico Primary Schools to sing in choirs, particularly at St Gabriel's Church.
In 2017, the Archbishop of Canterbury presented him with the Thomas Cranmer Award for Music and Worship. He is Chair of the Choral Evensong Trust.
RALPH ALLWOOD
COURSE DIRECTOR
Katherine Dienes-Williams, MA, BMus, FRCO, LTCL, Hon. FRSCM, Hon. FGCM was appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers at Guildford Cathedral in January 2008 following six years as Director of Music at the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, Warwick. In May 2022 she was appointed the first ever female President of the Cathedral Organists’ Association.
Katherine was born and educated in Wellington, New Zealand and studied for a BA in Modern Languages and a BMus at Victoria University, Wellington. Katherine was Organ Scholar at Wellington Cathedral from 1988 to 1991 when she was appointed Assistant Organist there.
Katherine came to England in 1991 to take up the post of Organ Scholar at Winchester Cathedral and Assistant Organist at Winchester College. She has also held posts as Organist and Assistant Director of Music at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, Assistant Organist and Director of the Cathedral Girls’ Choir at Norwich Cathedral prior to moving to Warwick as Director of Music at the Collegiate Church of St. Mary.
She is Chair elect of the Royal College of Organists and a trustee of both the Organists Charitable trust and YOST (Young Organ Scholars Trust) and is regularly asked to be a guest choral workshop leader for the Royal School of Church Music in the UK, South Africa, the USA, Canada, and Australia. Katherine is also a Patron of the Society of Women Organists. She has given several organ recitals in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, U.S.A., Bermuda, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Spain, and Singapore. She has performed as organ soloist with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé, the City of London Sinfonia, Southern Pro Musica, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She is also active as a composer, having received several commissions both in the UK, the USA, and New Zealand.
Katherine holds a Master of Arts in Music and Liturgy from Leeds University. She features both as organist and choral conductor on several recordings. She is in demand as a choral workshop leader in the UK, the USA, and several other European countries. In both summer 2019 and 2022 she directed the St. Thomas’ girl choristers’ course in New York. She co-directed a Rodolfus Foundation junior choral course in summer 2023.
Other interests include languages (her BA is in French and German), travel, reading and fitness. She is a Knight of the Grand Order of Vitéz and a Knight of the Order of St. Ladislau (Hungary).
Katherine is married to Patrick Williams, and they have a daughter, (singing Masters’ student at the Royal Academy of Music) Hannah.
KATHERINE DIENES-WILLIAMS
COURSE DIRECTOR
THE TEAM
Australian organist, collaborative pianist, and conductor Joshua Ryan is a prizewinning graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. He is Organist and Assistant Director of Music of Hampstead Parish Church, Organist of St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate (the National Musician’s Church), accompanist of Dulwich Choral Society, and pursues a busy portfolio career alongside these positions. He is establishing himself as one of his generation’s most exciting and dynamic musicians. His recordings and live performances have been lauded as “impeccable” (British Music Society), “beautiful, wonderful, and full of colour” (BBC Radio 3), and “offers great clarity and panache” (Music Web International).
Joshua’s musical interests are diverse and wide ranging. He has worked across Europe and Australia as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and continuo player with a vast array of conductors, singers, choirs, and ensembles including the BBC Singers, Academy of Ancient Music, London Mozart Players, Hampstead Collective, Sydney Chamber Choir, Allegri Ensemble, Philippe Herreweghe, John Butt, Edward Gardner, William Vann, Iain Ledingham, Rachel Podger, Margaret Faultless, Eamonn Dougan, Nicky Spence, Thomas Hobbs, and Nicholas Mullroy. Joshua has also featured on four critically acclaimed discs of music by Vaughan Williams, Elgar, and Holst as the accompanist with the Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and William Vann recorded for the SOMM and Albion labels. In early 2024, he recorded a fifth disc with the BBC Singers featuring previously unrecorded choral works by English composer Michael Berkeley.
Alongside Joshua’s performing, he is also a musical researcher. He is the curator of The Mulliner Project, a significant research project on the reinterpretation of the music of The Mulliner Book on a range of historical and modern instruments. For more information you can visit themullinerproject.com to read about and listen to the project.
For more information and recordings please visit joshua-ryan.co.uk
JOSHUA RYAN
PRINCIPAL ACCOMPANIST
An Alumna of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and National Opera Studio, Anita’s performing career spanned opera, oratorio and lieder. She is particularly known for her teaching of trebles and taught the choristers of Westminster Cathedral for nearly 30 years (from 1990-2019). She was awarded an Honorary ARSCM in 2017 in recognition of her outstanding work in this area following the publication of her vocal health for choristers book ‘The Chorister and the Racing Car – A Guide to High Performance Singing’. She currently teaches the choristers at St. George’s Windsor Castle, St. John’s College Cambridge, London Oratory Schola Cantorum and Cardinal Vaughan Schola Cantorum. She also teaches the choral scholars of Selwyn College Cambridge, is a vocal coach to The London Symphony Chorus and has a busy private teaching practice.
Anita has been a guest tutor on Eton Choral Courses for more than 25 years (now The Rodolfus Choral Courses) and was on the visiting music staff at Eton College for 20 of those so has a great deal of experience working with changing voices. Anita was also a member of the vocal staff at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for several years but, in order to develop in other areas has now given up this position.
An intrinsic belief in the importance of good body use led Anita to train as a Feldenkrais Practitioner. She teaches regular classes and workshops and has given Feldenkrais workshops for singers at the GSMD, Leeds College of Music and for Voice Workshop and the British Voice Association.
ANITA MORRISON
SINGING TEACHER
James Oldfield was a chorister at Leicester Cathedral after which he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Music. He combined singing as a consort singer with groups such as AAM, Polyphony and Monteverdi Choir with a career in Opera. His operatic performances include work with Opera North, WNO, ROH and ENO. On the concert platform he has performed all the great oratorios across the UK and abroad, many of which have been recorded. As a vocal coach, James works regularly with the National Youth Choir and Gabrieli Roar. His teaching at Cambridge University is at Trinity and Emmanuel colleges, and he also teaches at the illustrious Tiffin School in Kingston. His association with Rodolfus courses is very long, having attended three of them, been a member of the Rodolfus Choir, Assistant Music staff, Housemaster, and now Singing Teacher.
JAMES OLDFIELD
SINGING TEACHER
Rebecca Outram began her life as a pianist, violinist and organist, and it was only on joining the chapel choir of Keble College, Oxford that Rebecca discovered her voice and passion for singing.
Since studying on the Early Music course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Rebecca has built up a career performing with many of the UK’s leading consorts, most notably The Sixteen, with whom she sang for at least sixteen years, and The Cardinall’s Musick. An experienced soloist, Rebecca has over the years performed Bach’s B minor Mass with The English Concert, Haydn’s Nelson Mass with the choir of St.Paul’s Cathedral, and Handel’s Messiah with the CBSO, to name a few highlights. Amongst her 200 or more recordings are those of songs by William and Henry Lawes, and the Monteverdi Vespers for Hyperion, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Ottavio Dantone and Accademia Bizantina, and Dido and Aeneas with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Rebecca is also proud of her teaching work with the choristers of Westminster Abbey and Magdalen College, Oxford, and pupils at Eton College and The London Oratory School. She has also taught undergraduates at Keble and University Colleges, Oxford. She is a vocal coach for the London Symphony Chorus, with whom she recorded Howard Goodall’s ‘Never to Forget’.
REBECCA OUTRAM
SINGING TEACHER
MASTERCLASSES & WORKSHOPS
Helen Charlston was recently a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2021-23), and a recipient of the 2021 Ferrier Loveday Song Prize. In 2023 she won a Gramophone Award for Best Concept Album, and collected the Vocal award at the BBC Music Magazine Awards, both for her second Delphian album: Battle Cry: the only recording that year to win at both ceremonies.
Described as “surely one of the most exciting voices in the new generation of British singers” (Alexandra Coghlan, Gramophone 2022), Helen was a ‘Rising Star’ of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment 2017-2019, and was selected for Le Jardin des Voix academy with Les Arts Florissants in 2021.
In the 2022/23 Season she made her debut at Versailles Royal Opera singing Dido in Purcell Dido & Aeneas, and at Grange Festival singing Sorceress/Spirit in the same opera. This season she will cover the title role in Charpentier Médée at Opéra national de Paris.
On the concert platform in 2023/24, Helen premieres a new song cycle written for her as a companion piece to Schumann Dichterliebe by Héloïse Werner at the Oxford International Song Festival and Wigmore Hall, reunites with Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Richard Egarr to perform Bach B minor mass, tours Bach's St John Passion with Les Arts Florissants in Asia, records Britten Phaedra live in concert with BBC Philharmonic,sings Handel's Messiah with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, and Britten Sinfonia, and Monteverdi's Vespers in Geneva with Ensemble I Gemelli.
📷 Oscar Ortega
HELEN CHARLSTON
VOCAL MASTERCLASS
Rupert Gough has been director of Choral Music and College Organist at Royal Holloway, University of London since 2005. He is also Organist and Director of Music at London’s oldest surviving church, Saint Bartholomew the Great, which maintains a professional choir. At Royal Holloway Rupert has developed the choral programme to include weekly choral recitals, choral conducting courses and transformed the Chapel Choir into an elite group of 24 choral scholars. The Choir particularly came to prominence through their series of recordings forHyperion Records and for their role in popularising contemporary composers from the Baltics States, USA and UK. Their recording Winter Songs of the music of Ola Gjeilo is one of Decca Classics most successful albums and was top of the US and UK classical charts. The choir is now greatly in demand for recording work from a variety of record labels, composers and orchestras and travels widely for concert performances.
Rupert was a chorister at the Chapels Royal, St. James's Palace, and won a scholarship to the Purcell School. He received (with distinction) a Masters degree in English Church Music from the University of East Anglia whilst Organ Scholar at Norwich Cathedral. For 11 years he was Assistant Organist at Wells Cathedral during which time he made around 30 CD recordings as accompanist and director. Rupert has worked with a wide variety of professional ensembles including the BBC Singers, King’s Singers, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. He is an established reviewer of organ recordings and has a number of compositions, editions and arrangements published by OUP, Edition Peters and Carus Verlag.
RUPERT GOUGH
CONSORT WORKSHOP
Catherine Fleming is an Alexander Technique professor at the Royal College of Music, a recorder professor and Alexander Technique teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and also teaches at Eton College. As a freelance musician, she enjoys performing and recording with a variety of ensembles including her quartet The Flautadors. As a member of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, Catherine co-chairs the ‘Alexander in Education’ special interest group promoting the work and setting up specific projects. She spoke on the education panels at the 2018 International Congress for AT in Chicago and the 2016 AT in Music Conference at Trinity Laban College in London.
CATHERINE FLEMING
ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE
EVENSONGS
📷 Photo by Charles Postiaux on Unsplash
WESTMINSTER ABBEY
EVENSONG
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BURSARIES
The Rodolfus Foundation offers generous bursaries to help with the costs of our courses. You can apply for a bursary as part of the online application process, and all details provided will treated confidentially.
REFERENCES
As part of your application, we request a brief reference from a singing or music teacher. Please note that this reference does not impact your acceptance onto the course. Its purpose is solely to provide our directors and singing teachers with some additional insight about you and your musical experience so far. Please be aware that references are only accepted through our online portal.
AGE RANGE
To attend this course, you must be in year 11 or above and between the ages of 16 and 21 as of 31st August 2024.
ACCOMMODATION
Singers will stay in the halls of residence at RHUL. This will be student flats made of between 4 and 6 single rooms. Each flat has shared bathroom facilities.
UPDATE 19TH JANUARY 2024
This course now has limited places for sopranos. Please contact Helen on helen@therodolfusfoundation.com to find out how to join the waiting list or for information about the other courses.
UPDATE 3RD APRIL 2024
This course now has limited places for sopranos/mezzos/altos/counter tenors. Please contact Helen on helen@therodolfusfoundation.com to find out how to join the waiting list or for information about the other courses.
UPDATE 28TH MAY 2024
Please contact us directly if you would like to apply for this course on helen@therodolfusfoundation.com
*INTERNATIONAL APPLICANTS: We can only take payments for international applicants through Stripe this year. Course fees will have an approximately 2.9% card processing fee.