Hertfordshire Chorus, Rufus Frowde & David Temple
Biographie Hertfordshire Chorus, Rufus Frowde & David Temple
Rufus Frowde
read music at Oxford University (where he was Conductor of the Oxford University Philharmonia, Organ Scholar of Merton College and a tenor in Schola Cantorum, performing his Finals Recital as a violinist). He subsequently became Organ Scholar of Worcester Cathedral. In 2003, Rufus took up his current post as Organist and Assistant Director of Music at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. He combined this with postgraduate study in Choral Direction and Church Music at the Royal Academy of Music, being awarded prizes in both disciplines.
Rufus appears as a conductor and organist on the Divine Art and Diversions labels and has participated in workshops with the BBC Singers, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the Royal Academy of Music Chamber Choir as well as conducting in the London Master Classes under Benjamin Zander. Current conducting appointments include Surrey Youth Choir, Mid Herts Youth Orchestra, North Herts & Stevenage Youth Orchestra, VIVAMUS (Chamber Choir), The Hardynge Choir and Dacorum Community Choir (founder), with whom he has recently conducted Jonathan Dove’s community opera ‘Tobias and the Angel’. Work as a guest conductor has recently included Hertfordshire Philharmonia and Hitchin Chamber Orchestra. He has also formed his own professional group, PAEAN.
Rufus is a passionate educator and is heavily involved in the work of Hertfordshire Music Service as an orchestral conductor and animateur (most notably as Artistic and Musical Director of the 2014, 2016 & 2018 Hertfordshire Galas at the Royal Albert Hall). He is also an Animateur for the Chorister Outreach Program at St Alban’s Cathedral. He has also worked as a choral director for Goldsmiths, University of London, collaborated with the Yehudi Menuhin School on a number of choral projects, and worked as a chorus master for a production with Australian Touring Opera. Rufus is a part-time member of the academic and peripatetic staff at the Princess Helena College, Hitchin.
Recent performances include numerous UK cathedrals, St Martin in the Fields, St John’s Smith Square (with Emma Johnson), the Spitalfields Festival, New Chamber Opera, La Madeleine (Paris), Kaunas Cathedral (Lithuania), St. Thomas’s (Leipzig), St. Paul’s Basilica (Rome), Cologne Cathedral, Haarlem Cathedral and Neresheim Abbey (Germany), as well as Dave Brubeck’s Cantata The Gates of Justice (European Premiere). He accompanied Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle in Rome under the direction of the late Sir David Willcocks. He has also accompanied a number of prominent musicians including the trumpeter Crispian Steele Perkins, Kiri Te Kanawa and José Carreras and played continuo on a UK tour with the acclaimed violinist Lara St John and the London Baroque Ensemble. Contemporary music also features highly in Rufus’s diary and he has conducted and played for numerous premieres including works by Judith Weir, Richard Allain, Ben Parry, Graham Ross, Sasha Johnson Manning, Richard Sisson and Will Todd. 2014 included his first organ recital at Westminster Abbey and the premiere of his carol ‘Adam lay bounden’ at the Annual Carol Service for the Royal Academy of Arts.
On the lighter side, Rufus is a regular deputy pianist in the Palm Court Quintet at the Ritz Hotel, London and has played the organ for a number of celebrity weddings as well as for Royalty. He was a regular contributor to Classical Recordings Quarterly and in 2012 Rufus was awarded Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.
David Temple
has been awarded an MBE in the 2018 New Year's Honours, for his services to music. He began his life as a musician when, at the age of eighteen, he joined the London Philharmonic Choir. He taught himself to read music and was, within weeks, singing under conductors such as Sir Georg Solti, Sir Adrian Boult, Bernard Haitink, and Leopold Stokowski.
His passion for classical music drew him towards conducting, and after having made a number of commercial recordings he became the founding conductor of Crouch End Festival Chorus in 1984.
His extensive repertoire includes an impressive collection of commissions, from 1985 to 2018. With the Chorus he has conducted Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in a sold-out Royal Festival Hall and Harmonium by John Adams in the presence of the composer in the Barbican.
Released in 2017 is a landmark recording of JS Bach’s St John Passion (in English) with Chandos Records. He has also prepared the Chorus for concerts under conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Semyon Bychkov, Edward Gardner, and Jiří Bělohlávek.
David has also worked as a guest chorus master with the BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Symphony Chorus. He has recorded with Chandos Records, Signum Records, Hyperion, Meridian, Deux-Elles, Silva Classics, Decca, EMI, Warner Classics and Sony.
Since 2000, David has been Musical Director of the Hertfordshire Chorus; in June 2016 he recorded Will Todd’s Ode to a Nightingale and James McCarthy’s Codebreaker with the Chorus and the BBC Concert Orchestra for Signum Records. Will Todd's hugely popular Mass in Blue was also a Hertfordshire Chorus commission. David has toured extensively with the Chorus, in the UK with many visits to Sage Gateshead and also throughout Europe.
David relishes his collaborations with musicians from other genres, including Sir Ray Davies, Noel Gallagher, Ennio Morricone, and Hans Zimmer, all of whom are patrons of the Crouch End Festival Chorus. He has also worked with major rock bands such as Oasis, Take That and Muse.
In his work with Sir Ray Davies, he has toured the USA, appeared on the David Letterman Show (with New York's Dessoff Choirs) and on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. He also conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2011 Meltdown Festival.
