Nicholas Thorpe is Musical Director of Newstead Abbey Singers and Southwell Choral Society. He conducts several other groups on an ad hoc basis and by invitation. He has conducted major works including St Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass by Bach; Elijah with Willard White as soloist; Messiah and Requiems by Mozart, Fauré and Rutter.
He enjoys promoting new and rarely performed music, has directed works by John Rutter, Andrew Carter and Bob Chilcott and conducted premieres of In Memoriam by local composer Robert Steadman and Creations by Kevin Malone, written for Southwell Choral Society. With various choirs he has performed in Denmark, Germany, France, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Menorca and Spain.
His compositions include two musicals, both coincidentally with the same title (Inside Out) but with totally different subject matter. Like Music on the Waters was commissioned by Burton Joyce Choral Society and Songs of Sherwood, Footsteps and Christmas Cards were written for the Newstead Abbey Singers. He wrote the incidental music for Touchwood, the Southwell Millennium play, and provided a setting of "Morning has broken" for a television documentary programme on Rabbi Lionel Blue. He recently arranged songs for a Cambridge University production of The Winter’s Tale.
Nick is married with two sons and lives in Southwell, where he is senior lay clerk in Southwell Minster Choir - the middle of three generations of Thorpes who have maintained an unbroken tradition of over forty years in the choir. Nick is also the Director of the Southwell Festival, an annual programme of events taking place every June.
After thirty years as a teacher in comprehensive schools, he is now Director of Music at Wellow House School and works for Nottinghamshire Arts Support Service.
He is Chairman of the Midlands Region of the Association of British Choral Directors.
Click to hear Nick Thorpe's arrangement of the American "Huron Carol"
