Charles Naylor - Chairman
Charles brings a lifetime of experience from his career as a Global Communications and Marketing professional having worked for firms including Credit Suisse, HSBC, Centrica and Shell. But he also understands the joy of choral singing and the many advantages that a musical education brings having been a choral scholar at St John’s Cambridge and a professional opera singer at the Vienna Staatsoper and Glyndebourne before changing to a career in business.
Rodolfus appoints 13 new Trustees
In the 40th anniversary year for the Rodolfus Choir and with the 45th year of our choral courses next year, we are delighted to announce the appointment of 13 new trustees to our board.
Our new colleagues will bring a rich and diverse array of experience to support our strategy to grow the reach of the Rodolfus Foundation into all communities in the British Isles, and in selected international locations. We will do this by encouraging more children and young people to attend our existing courses and by establishing more courses in different locations. With over 12,000 alumni so far, we aim to continue to bring the joy of excellent choral singing to the widest possible community.
Welcome to: Kate Ashby, Kieran Cooper, Suzie Crookes, Alex Eadon, Alex Goodwin, Nicholas Harries, Simon Holt, Simone Krüger Bridge, Simon Neill-O’Brien, Hope Pugh, George Richford, Megan Rickard and Richard Tanner.
Our new Trustees will join Jenny Hasnip, Laura Oldfield, Joseph Steadman, Binath Philomin and Sophie Taylor-Denton, although we sadly say goodbye and thanks to Niall Weir and Simon Toyne who will be retiring as trustees after many years. They have both given invaluable support to the Foundation. (Charles Naylor, November 2024)
Current Trustees
Kate Ashby enjoys a busy career as a professional singer specialising in early music. While a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, she co-founded Stile Antico - an unconducted vocal ensemble, specialising in sixteenth-century repertoire. With the group, she has performed on five continents (just Africa and Antarctica to go) and recorded fourteen discs for Harmonia Mundi as well as three for Decca. Stile Antico's discs have received every major European classical award and been nominated three times at the GRAMMY awards.
Kate is passionate about inspiring the next generation of singers, teaching singing to children of all ages at Orchard House Prep School and St Cecilia's Secondary School. She is also chorister tutor at St Mary's, Merton Park and regularly gives workshops on ensemble singing with Stile Antico to groups of adult amateurs at the Music Summer School, and to young people on their ever-popular Youth Consort.
Kate Ashby
After a music degree and organ scholarship at Leeds, and a career in arts marketing at organisations including the Aldeburgh Festival, Cambridge Arts Theatre and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Kieran has spent the last 20 years working in communications technology. He spends as much time as possible singing, as an extra / dep at Ely Cathedral and for other projects around the country, and plays the organ in his local church. He is an experienced charity trustee having caught the committee bug from his parents at an early age, and also tries to attend as many concerts and operas as he can.
Kieran Cooper
Suzie studied music as an undergraduate, singing as a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. She believes her musical education helped her develop a wide range of skills, and provided opportunities she would not otherwise have had. She is delighted to be working with the Rodofus Foundation to help create these opportunities and experiences for the next generation, in the context of the rich choral tradiiton in this country.
Since graduating , Suzie has pursued a career as a solicitor specialising in tax and employee share incentives. She continues her music, singing with a chamber choir in West Yorkshire and playing with the Airedale Symphony Orchestra
Suzie Crookes
Alexander is proud to be a Trustee of an organisation for which he has worked for over twenty years. He enjoys a life as a schoolmaster and is the Director of Music at Sherborne School, having held roles at Dean Close Cheltenham, Oundle School, Eastbourne College and King Edward VI Southampton. His training began as a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, continuing at the Royal Academy of Music and Middlesex University. Alongside his other roles he has been a deputy lay-clerk at Gloucester and Peterborough Cathedrals as well as Organ Scholar at Tewkesbury Abbey and Director of Music at Christ Church Southgate and St Mary's Harrow-on-the-Hill. Alexander brings this wealth of both lived-choral experience and school-related skills to the trustee role.
Alexander Eadon
Alex is currently Director of Music at The Portsmouth Grammar School. His involvement in choral music began as a chorister in his local parish church choir and he has since held positions as an organist and conductor in the UK and New Zealand, including Chichester, Ely, and Christchurch Transitional Cathedrals, where he was founding director of the Girl Chorister programme.
He is dedicated to enabling high-quality opportunities for young people to engage with the incredible experience of singing in a choir.
Alex Goodwin
Nicholas is a Private Client partner at the City law firm Macfarlanes LLP, where he heads the Charity team (as well as advising individuals and trustees on tax and estate planning issues). Choral music has always been one of his passions. Having had the benefit of excellent choral training at school (including participating in the Choral Courses) he sang in the choir of New College Oxford as an academical clerk and continues to sing in (and occasionally direct) choirs as often as his legal career permits. He is a keen advocate of the benefits of choral singing for young people and is therefore committed to the Rodolfus Foundation’s vision.
Nicholas Harries
Jenny Hasnip - Treasurer
Jenny has been a keen amateur singer throughout her life since first singing in the church choir as a child.
“The appeal of the choral courses with singers then having the chance to join the Rodolfus Choir is close to my heart and being part of the Rodolfus Foundation is a privilege.”
Jenny is an accountant and school bursar and lends these skills and experience to the Foundation.
Jenny Hasnip - Treasurer
In 1982, while a student at Malvern College, Simon Holt attended the Uppingham Choral Course as an organ student. After a post-graduate year at Goldsmiths' College training to be a music teacher, he taught at Ardingly College and Bromsgrove School. In 1999, after three years as Director of Music at Bristol Cathedral School, he and his family moved to Connecticut in the United States. Over the last 25 years he has founded a music school and an opera company as well as serving as Director of Music at St. Thomas Choir School in New York City and St. James School in Hagerstown in Maryland. He has also raised over $10 million for several non-profit arts organizations in his community. Currently he is the Founding Artistic Director and General Manager of Salt Marsh Opera in Stonington, CT, Director of Music at The First Congregational Church in Old Lyme, and Executive Director of The Washington Art Association in Washington, CT.
Simon Holt
Professor Simone Krüger Bridge is a distinguished senior academic with extensive experience in higher education, recognized for her excellence in teaching, research and leadership. Actively involved in supporting choral music as a chorister parent and member of a Cathedral community choir, Simone brings both personal passion and professional expertise to her trusteeship, while her participatory research focuses on the social value of choral music, exploring its transformative impact on individuals and communities.
Simone Krueger Bridge
Laura Oldfield
Laura is a secondary school music teacher, professional classical singer, blogger and poet. A choral course alumna, Laura now sings with Tenebrae, Tenebrae Consort, The Eric Whitacre Singers, The Monteverdi Choir, Polyphony, Alamire, Solomon's Knot and The Cardinall’s Musick as well as regular session singing, appearing on many film soundtracks as part of London Voices. She also enjoys performing contemporary music, recently singing Stockhausen's Stimmung alongside Ben Parry in London Voices.
Laura Oldfield
Binath Philomin
Binath is a teacher and professional choral singer. His musical career began in West London and continued as a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford. He was later awarded a full music scholarship to Eton College and sang on his first Rodolfus Choral Course thereafter. Binath went on to read Classics at the University of Cambridge and was a Choral Scholar in the Choir of King’s College under Daniel Hyde.
Prior to his current appointment as a Deputy Boarding Housemaster and Classics Teacher at Winchester College, Binath taught at King’s College School Cambridge alongside a role as Boarding House Tutor. His musical work coupled with significant experience as a boarding practitioner in education settings, provide him with the ideal platform from which both to engage young people in singing, and to modernise the pastoral provision on our residential courses.
As a musician from a minority ethnic background, Binath has always had a passion for further developing the provision of musical opportunities for children of all upbringings. He works regularly with music education organisations including the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, the Gabrieli Consort and Vox Urbane, and has worked with Tenebrae since 2022 to help deliver their choral education programme in state schools around London. He has more recently worked with our Junior Choral Courses, running boarding houses, consort groups, leading workshops and overseeing the new Changing Voices Programme which launched in August 2024.
In his free time, Binath is a keen cricketer and aspiring cook. He has been a trustee of the Rodolfus Foundation since 2021 and recently took on oversight of the foundation’s Safeguarding practices.
Binath Philomin
Hope Pugh is a Mezzo Soprano and Educator from the West Midlands. Hope studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, earning a degree in Vocal Performance that laid the foundation for a vibrant and varied career in music.
Hope currently works as an Alto Lay-clerk at St. Philip’s Cathedral in Birmingham, Choral Director for the National Schools Singing Programme, a freelance musician working with many wonderful choirs and orchestras and is a Singing Teacher for a Choral Chorister project in the Handsworth (an inner-city area of Birmingham with the largest proportion of its population living in the 10% most deprived areas of England). Hope believes in the transformative power of music to foster cultural participation everywhere. Hope is passionate about the profound impact of musical education, believing it has the power to improve life chances for young people and enrich the broader community.
Hope Pugh
George Arthur Richford is Professor of Music at the Royal Marines School of Music. He comes from a working-class, state educated background and is committed to access for all in choral music. He is a multi-award winning composer and conductor and his work is regularly performed and broadcast around the world. He has held positions at Durham and Southampton University, Newcastle and Salisbury Cathedrals and is a deputy director at Great St Bart’s in the city of London.
George Richford
Joseph Steadman
Having been a keen singer while at school, Joe combined his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in law with choral scholarships at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and The Queen’s College, Oxford. Joe is now a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers in London, where his practice focuses on business, property and trusts disputes. He continues to sing regularly, in particular with the choir of St Mark’s Regent’s Park and the Lacock Scholars.
Joseph Steadman
The Choral Courses in 1986, 1987 and 1988 that Richard attended were life changing and he has been delighted both to return as course organist on several occasions and be the proud parent of a current member of The Rodolfus Choir whose life has also been changed by Choral Courses. He is Director of Music at Rugby School, leading a large team of professional musicians and students with broad specialisms, a choir that regularly appears on BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong, the Rugby Choristers at Bilton Grange who sing six Choral Evensongs each week and instrumental and vocal partnerships with schools in Warwickshire.
Richard has directed choral courses in Sweden and USA, given masterclasses in Shanghai and Shenzhen, produced over fifty recordings and has worked extensively for the BBC as music director, accompanist, and music advisor. He was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, student at the Royal Academy of Music and organ scholar at Exeter College Oxford; he was Ralph Allwood’s predecessor as Director of the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir and has held posts at St Albans Cathedral, All Saints’ Northampton and at Blackburn Cathedral, where he was Director of Music for 13 years.
Richard Tanner
Sophie Taylor-Denton
Sophie is a secondary school music teacher, as well as a professional choral and session singer. Sophie began her choral journey in the Catholic Church as a choral scholar at Nottingham Cathedral as well as the Rodolfus Choir, NYCGB and LYC. Her professional singing engagements include liturgical work in various London churches, television, festivals, UK tours and backing singing for popular music artists.
A Rodolfus Choir alumna, Sophie spent four years in the travel industry as an account manager. Her switch to teaching was instigated by a Rods event, when she helped with a primary school workshop for the Barnes Music Festival - and she has never looked back! She is passionate about bringing choral music to singers from disadvantaged backgrounds, having had bursary support as a youth in order for her to participate in high-profile choral singing engagements.
Sophie Taylor-Denton
Megan combines a career in the civil service with singing and playing the harp professionally. She attended Chetham’s School of Music and was one of the first girl choristers to join Manchester Cathedral Choir. An alumnus of the Rodolfus choir, she now performs regularly with the North-West based Kantos Chamber Choir and deputises at Manchester and Blackburn Cathedrals.
Megan has a wealth of leadership expertise and experience, having held roles in analysis, strategy and transformation, and HR. Most recently, she has developed and led high-performing teams, supporting others to achieve their full potential.
Megan Rickard
Simon Neill-O’Brien