Sherborne
Summer School of Music
2024
The Art of Choral Conducting : Biographies
Amy Bebbington is a passionate advocate for choral singing and choral conductor training. She is sought-after for her dynamic and engaging teaching style, and her wealth of choral and pedagogical experience. Amy holds First Class Honours and Master’s Degrees in Piano Performance (UK), and a Doctoral Degree in Choral Conducting (USA). She is proud to hold the post of Director of Training for the Association of British Choral Directors.
Amy is a co-founder and creator of the London International Choral Conducting Competition (LICCC) and Wavelength, an organisation designed to celebrate, educate and nurture women in choral leadership. She has shared the art of choral leadership for the Leading Voices Festival (Utrecht), Norway University (Hamar), International Summer Schools in Sherborne (UK) and Limerick (Ireland), Queens’ College Cambridge, The Hallé Youth Choir, Military Wives Choral Directors and The Royal College of Organists.
Amy established her own national Choral Conducting Masterclass Series, and, as a result of the pandemic, created a successful online training course for international choral leaders called Choral Leadership and Pedagogy (CLP). Amy adjudicates for the London International Choral Conducting Competition, the International Choral Festivals in Derry and Cork, Feis Ceoil (Dublin), Choir of the Year, Music for Youth National Festival and the Cheltenham Music Festival among many others. She also has choral works published by Banks Music Publications and Multitude of Voyces.
Amy is in great demand as a choral clinician, mentor and teacher, and is currently Musical Director of the Harlequin Chamber Choir, Corra Sound, Nota Bene and Sempre Fidelis Singers.
Charlie Penn graduated from the University of Birmingham where he studied the piano with Joseph Middleton. He has a busy freelance career as a versatile musician specialising in work with choirs of all ages and abilities.
Charlie is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, previously joining the music staff for the award-winning Grimes on the Beach in Aldeburgh. He is director of the Harborough Singers, the A440 choir in Reading, director and accompanist to the Hanover Choir and Hertford Choral Society, and Assistant Director to Cantate Youth Choir. He also works with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain as a section leader and accompanist.
Additionally, he delivers choral workshops in schools across the country for the Voices Foundation, and regularly works with Sinfonia Viva on their education and orchestral projects. On stage in the UK and Australia, he has appeared in Orpheus, an original piece devised and performed by Little Bulb Theatre and as Keyboard 1 in an exciting new orchestration of the Threepenny Opera for the renowned Salzburg Festival. He has even made a brief appearance on the BBC’s The One Show, teaching Lee Mack some basic piano vamping!