Trevor Hughes, Tom Caldecote, Bridget Kerrison
Tom Caldecote
Tom studied clarinet at Birmingham Conservatoire with Sally Harrop, Tim Lines and Michael Harris. After graduating Tom won a place on the Foyle Future First orchestral training scheme with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. While taking part in the scheme Tom studied with the principal clarinettist Robert Hill. After finishing the scheme Tom undertook private study with Joy Farrall. In 2012 Tom was selected to be co-principal clarinet of Southbank Sinfonia. A nine month program of orchestral and chamber music projects during which Tom performed the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, went on tour to the Channel Islands with a wind quintet as well as playing with the Royal Opera House, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Tom has worked with various orchestras including Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia and Orchestra of the Swan on projects ranging from chamber music to tours and broadcasts on BBC radio. As a soloist Tom has performed the Mozart, Copland, Weber’s 1st concerto, the Finzi concerto and the Mendelssohn concert pieces.
Bridget Kerrison
Bridget was a first study singer at The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire taught by Cathy Benson, and at the end of her first year was put forward for the Kathleen Ferrier Bursary Award. Throughout her four years at the Conservatoire Bridget was heavily involved in the Early Music Department studying Baroque singing technique with Andrew King, and was awarded the Corton Hyde Early Music Prize in 2008. She also won the English Song Prize in that same year.
Graduating from the Conservatoire with a first class degree, she is now a freelance singer based in Hertfordshire. She has sung with Ex Cathedra, Birmingham Bach Choir, The Holst Singers, Ensemble Plus Ultra, Armonico Consort and the Philharmonia Chorus as part of their professional singers’ scheme. As a soloist Bridget has also taken part in masterclasses given by Michael Chance and Toby Spence. Bridget has sung on several recordings with with The Holst Singers, Ex Cathedra and the Philharmonia Chorus, including a recording from the Chorus of Beethoven’s 9thSymphony. She has toured regularly with the Philharmonia Chorus to France, Spain and Germany and has also performed in the Barbican, The Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Albert Hall and other UK venues.
Bridget teaches for Hertfordshire Music Service where she leads several choirs including ‘Let’s Sing’, a community children’s choir based at Stevenage Music Centre. She has been teaching for The National Children’s Choir of Great Britain since 2011.
Trevor Hughes
Trevor is a Graduate of the Royal College of Music (where he studied organ, piano, and viola), winning the Colles Prize, and an Associate of the Royal College of Organists, winning the Doris Wookey Prize.
As an organist, he has performed on the organs in Birmingham Symphony Hall, Leeds Town Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, and St. John’s, Smith Square, London, St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, and on the cathedral organs in Canterbury, Ely, Gibraltar, Norwich, St. Alban’s, St. Asaph, and Southwark. He has also performed on major organs in America, France (including Rouen Cathedral), Austria (including Salzburg Dom Cathedral), and Germany (including the Elisabethkirche, and University Church in Marburg).
His lifelong experience in church music recently reached something of a milestone, when, in 2022, he retired after 27 very happy years as Director of Music at Holy Saviour Church in Hitchin. In 2003, he took the Church Choir to Barbados where it performed both in concerts, and broadcasts on Caribbean Radio and Television. Later, in the same year, he formed a second, female voice, choir in the church, The Radcliffe Singers, which sang a wide range of sacred and secular music. Both choirs recorded two CDs, and toured, both in the UK and also to Nuits St. Georges, in France.
He has accompanied recitals in the Purcell Room, the Wigmore Hall, and on BBC Radio 3, as well as in many music clubs over the country, and for over ten years he contributed regularly to BBC Schools Radio music programmes, as keyboards player, musical director, and arranger. He has also made a number of educational recordings for Lindsay Music, and Faber Music.
Equally at home in a wide range of musical styles, Trevor has conducted many musicals in the theatre, and he has also played keyboards in a number of West End shows. His freelance work as both accompanist and choral conductor has taken him on numerous trips to the USA, as well as to Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland.
For some 10 years or so, until 2001, Trevor was Musical Director of the Stevenage Choral Society, whom he directed in many large-scale choral works, including a number of first performances. He directed the choir on concert tours to Austria and Germany, and in 1996, on its first tour of the USA. In a concert with the choir in 2000, he performed as soloist, with his wife Gillian, in the première of the Double Concerto for Clarinet, Organ, and Strings, a work written for them by Douglas Coombes. He was also formerly Musical Director of the north London female voice choir “Jubilate!”, for whom he has written a number of jazz-inspired arrangements.
His other musical work with children has encompassed teaching piano, organ, and theory, and adjudicating music festivals, both at home and abroad (including Hong Kong). Since 2008, he has also co-adjudicated the annual National Youth Choral Competition at the Royal Festival Hall, and the Barbican Centre, in aid of Barnardo’s, for which organisation he has also performed regularly in fund-raising concerts, including annual concerts on the organs of both the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Festival Hall.