We have resumed rehearsals again on Monday evenings
in Capel Memorial Hall between 7.45pm and 9.30pm.
Some COVID precautionary rules are observed for your safety.
Capel Choral Society is a small yet well-balanced classical chamber choir serving the villages in & around the Surrey Hills.
Drawing on singers also from the surrounding towns of Horsham, Crawley, Reigate, Dorking & Cranleigh, we are a friendly, social crowd who love to welcome new members!
Under our new conductor we quickly achieved renewed success in the Leith Hill Music Festival 2019, winning 4 out of 5 categories and have attracted glowing praise from our local, near sell-out audiences.
We are non-auditioned, yet still strive for the highest musical standards with carefully chosen repertoire to match our size and strengths.
Stuart Longley,
Conductor
Stuart comes to us with a music degree at Exeter University, followed by a 4 month Internship with the BBC Philharmonic Education Department, 9 months at a musician’s diary service in nearby Dorking, followed by a 20 year teaching career, all the while developing his conducting interests alongside.
He now enjoys a busy freelance lifestyle working solely as a Musical Director primarily with choirs along the Surrey/West Sussex border, also leading the London Saxophone Choir and briefly deputising with Linden Wind Orchestra.
Throughout his musical career he has undertaken work in multiple genres as both a classical saxophonist and conductor including orchestral, choral, wind ensemble, music theatre and multi-disciplinary arts projects, occasionally doubling as orchestral percussionist.
As a member of the National Saxophone Choir of Great Britain, he appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the World Saxophone Congress in Slovenia alongside soloist Gerard McChrystal and for over 15 years was a principal player with Brighton-based Southern Winds performing chamber and large scale works by Bernstein, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Grainger, Walton, Kurt Weill and Villa-Lobos.
Anthea Smallwood, Accompanist
Anthea has been involved with choirs since the age of seven and accompanying from the age of 13. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London and then took a teachers’ Certificate of Education at the University of Exeter.
She has worked in secondary schools as a music teacher and for Surrey County Arts as a peripatetic music teacher. She has accompanied Capel Choral Society for nearly 25 years and neighbouring Beare Green & Newdigate Choral Society since 1988.