Malcolm Goldring – Conductor and Musical Director
Malcolm Goldring, the co-founder of the Midland Festival Chorus, studied the oboe at the Royal College of Music before continuing postgraduate education studies at the Universities of Durham and Nottingham.
His career has been rich and varied: teaching and lecturing in schools and colleges, Music Inspector for the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, Assistant Principal at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Chief Executive of youngchoirs and currently Managing Director of SingUK (the national charity that supports singing by young people). Malcolm is also in great demand as an adjudicator at home and abroad – he has recently represented the UK at competitions in Barcelona, Slovenia, Germany and Flanders, and in May joins the jury at the prestigious international choral competition in Tours, France.
In 1990 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship and as a result toured the United States and Canada studying the development of youth and children’s choirs. On his return he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was recently awarded honorary membership of the Royal Schools of Church Music (Hon. RSCM). Malcolm is an Examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and a consultant to various organisations, local education authorities, schools and colleges.
In addition to being founding Musical Director of the Midland Festival Chorus, Malcolm is Music Director of the Guernsey Choral Workshop, now in its 16th year. He is frequently engaged as a guest conductor, both at home and abroad; he has conducted the closing concerts at two triennial Europa Cantat festivals in Austria and France; he opened the Budapest International Spring Music Festival a couple of years ago with Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony and Kodaly’s Budavari Te Deum. He has recently conducted in Slovenia, Denmark, Germany and Spain.
Michael Higgins - Accompanist
Michael Higgins studied with Margaret Newman at the Birmingham Conservatoire, later specialising in piano accompaniment and chamber music at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with Julius Drake and Iain Ledingham. Michael also studied organ with Andrew Fletcher and was Organ Scholar at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Chad, Birmingham.
Abroad, Michael has toured with singers and instrumentalists in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. He performs regularly in London and throughout the United Kingdom and works with the Birmingham Bach Choir, Midland Festival Chorus, the National Youth Choirs and National Children’s Choir of Great Britain, New London Singers, Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital Choral Society and the LSO Discovery Youth Choir. In 2005, Michael made a successful return visit to Auckland to lead workshops for choral accompanists by invitation of the New Zealand Choral Federation.
As a composer, he has answered a number of commissions, including songs for a set of educational books published in Singapore by Prentice Hall, and many of his choral and organ works are published worldwide by Kevin Mayhew Publishers.
Michael was awarded the Joseph Weingarten Memorial Trust Scholarship and completed his studies with Kálmán Dráfi at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Budapest.