Irish-American Daniel Mahoney was appointed as Music Director of Wimbledon Choral in 2024, taking over from Neil Ferris.

 

Daniel is an accomplished and in demand conductor, tenor, and guitarist, who divides his time between the UK and USA. He is the Director of Music of the Reading Bach Choir and Musical Director of the Dorking Choral Society. He has worked extensively in the UK and USA, with choirs like the Zamir Chorale of Boston, the MIT Women’s Chorus, the University of Birmingham Voices for John Wilson and the Birmingham University Singers in the UK.   He previously held the Conducting Fellowship of Schola Cantorum of Oxford.

 

Daniel was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus. He has performed at the BBC Proms with Sir Simon Rattle and Edward Gardner as a member of the CBSO Chorus. He has sung with Boston’s Cantata Singers, Renaissance Men, and Canto Armonico, and is a Deputy Lay Clerk at Guildford Cathedral. He brings a wealth of experience to Wimbledon Choral.

 

 

 

Michael Higgins is a pianist, composer and arranger, and co-Artistic Director of Sonoro.

 

Michael has written for Chivenor Military Ladies Choir, Farnham Youth Choir, Royal Scottish National Orchestra Youth Chorus, the Stay at Home Choir, the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain, Wimbledon Choral, as well as music for corporate films and television commercials, the Classic BRIT awards, BBC Children in Need and the Royal Variety Performance.  Many of his works are published by the Royal School of Church Music, Novello and Oxford University Press.

 

With a special interest in choral accompaniment, Michael is in demand with some of the leading choirs in the UK and regularly works with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain and the BBC Singers.  In 2012 he spent six months travelling across the USA filming a series for American television with popular choir master Gareth Malone and appeared on HM the Queen’s Christmas Message accompanying the Military Wives Choir at Buckingham Palace.

 

Michael studied piano with Margaret Newman at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and at the Royal Academy of Music, London, with Iain Ledingham and Julius Drake. He was awarded the Joseph Weingarten Memorial Trust Scholarship and continued his studies with Kálmán Dráfi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest.

 

He has recently been honoured as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

 

 

 

 

Neil Ferris (2009-2024)