Musicians

Adrian has been Director of Music at Gloucester since January 2008. During his years here, he has introduced Girl Choristers to the Cathedral Choir, has taken the choir to sing in the U.S.A., Canada, South Africa and Sweden, and has made several CDs, most recently the Church Music of Ian King, in June 2021. In May 2019, he took the Choristers to sing with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Philharmonie in Berlin.

Adrian has been Conductor of the BBC National Chorus of Wales since 1999. Since then, he has prepared that chorus for well over a hundred broadcast concerts (including, pre Covid, two BBC Proms each year), many of which he has conducted himself. The chorus has made many cds, two of which have been nominated for Grammy awards. The chorus’s most recent cd - which Adrian conducted - is of Stanford’s previously un-performed orchestral mass Via victrix 1918. He is to direct for a cd more un-recorded music by Stanford in 2022: the Elegiac Ode and the Latin Te Deum.

He has directed four Gloucester Three Choirs Festivals, in which he has conducted the Philharmonia in many of the great choral-orchestral classics, including Mahler’s Eighth and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphonies, Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, and the great oratorios of Elgar. He has also conducted many instrumental symphonies and concertos, and much contemporary orchestral music by such important composers as John Adams, Colin Matthews, and Joseph Phibbs.

Adrian enjoys an active career as a guest conductor of orchestras. In recent years he has conducted the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall, several times at St.John’s Smith Square, and in various provincial cities. He has conducted the RPO in many venues over the years,and will direct that orchestra in a series of concerts in the Midlands and the North in 2022. Every year he conducts the BBC NOW- most recently in a programme of Respighi and Piazzolla - and has conducted the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the BSO, the Orchestra of WNO and the Royal Flanders Philharmonic.

Adrian was educated at King’s College Cambridge, where he was the Organ Scholar. He continues to be in demand as an organist- recent engagements include a Concerto with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 2019, and recitals in Japan in November 2018.He was a soloist at one of the televised BBC Promenade concerts in 2018.

Educated at George Abbot School in his hometown of Guildford, he studied initially with Stephen Lacey, John Belcher and David Sanger, and then at the Royal College of Music, London with Margaret Phillips and Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin.

Jonathan became Assistant Director of Music at Gloucester Cathedral in March 2014, where he is the principal organist for the cathedral services, director of the Cathedral Youth Choir, accompanist to the Gloucester Choral Society, Musical Director of the Saint Cecilia Singers, and Accompanist to the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival Chorus. Choir tours have recently included visits to Canada and Sweden with the Cathedral Choirs, and Bavaria with the Gloucester Choral Society. In November 2015 Jonathan accompanied the choirs of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester Cathedrals and the Three Choirs Festival Chorus in an anniversary concert at Buckingham Palace, in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales. The 2016 Three Choirs Festival (held at Gloucester) was Jonathan’s first time as Festival Organist - involving performances of Elgar’s The Kingdom, the Enigma Variations and Mahler’s 8th Symphony (Symphony of a Thousand) amongst others. In the same festival, Jonathan conducted the Saint Cecilia Singers in a performance of Howells’ Requiem and the world première of Philip Lancaster’s War Passion.

Increasingly in demand as a recitalist, Jonathan’s career to date has taken him throughout the UK, as well as France, Germany, Italy, the USA and Australia. He has performed solo recitals at Westminster Cathedral, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Saint-Sulpice, Paris. Recitals abroad in the 2016/2017 season include visits to Germany and Italy. Jonathan also regularly improvises to silent movies, which have recently included Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the latter in the 2016 Three Choirs Festival), Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last and Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings. Jonathan has arranged many orchestral works for the organ, including Brahms’ Academic Festival and Tragic overtures, Elgar’s In the South, and other orchestral works by Dvořák, Dukas, Glinka, Mascagni, Rossini and Stravinsky.

In 2015 he released his first solo disc, Gloucester Experience (Willowhayne Records), featuring a new work, Homage à Paris, by John Hosking, works by former Gloucester Cathedral organist John Sanders and Reubke’s mighty Sonata on the 94th Psalm. In the summer of 2016 he released a DVD, The Grand Organ of Gloucester Cathedral, with Priory Records (featuring his own transcription of Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice).

Before coming to Gloucester, Jonathan was Organ Scholar of Winchester Cathedral (under Andrew Lumsden). At Winchester, Jonathan played for the funeral of the composer Sir John Tavener. Previously, Jonathan was Organ Scholar of Southwark Cathedral (under Peter Wright), serving as Acting Sub-Organist & Director of the Girls’ Choir in his final term, a term which included prestigious services for the 2012 London Olympics and HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Through his work in the Three Choirs Festival, he has played with the Philharmonia Orchestra and worked with guest conductors such as Simon Halsey, Martyn Brabbins and Edward Gardner. Recently, he has played in performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, Elgar’s The Apostles, Duruflé's Requiem and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms at Gloucester Cathedral, and often plays with the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales at the Wales Millenium Centre and St. David’s Hall, Cardiff. He often broadcasts live as a performer on both BBC Radio 3 and 4 and BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Jonathan is also Area Chair of the Royal School of Church Music Gloucester Area.

Nia grew up in North Wales where singing and choral music played a central part in her musical upbringing. After reading music at Robinson College, Cambridge, she won a full scholarship to study with Simon Halsey on his collaborative Master’s course between the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the University of Birmingham, where she graduated with distinction.  She is also a qualified teacher.

Nia has served at Gloucester Cathedral since 2014, firstly as the music department’s very first Singing Development Leader, and presently as Assistant Conductor.  Through her role, she has revitalised the Cathedral Junior Choir, significantly growing the membership, and has coached over 3,500 school children to sing as part of the Cathedral’s Junior Voices Project. She was the inaugural Conductor of the Girl Choristers, following the historic admission of girls to the Cathedral Choir in November 2016 – a milestone of which she is particularly proud.  As part of her role at Gloucester, Nia has also performed at the Three Choir’s Festival, including conducting a performance of Carl Davis’s The Last Train to Tomorrow, commemorating the Kindertransport in 2019; and the contemporary opera, The Happy Princess in 2023.

Nia has conducted the symphonic chorus of the CBSO, and has also served as an Associate Director of the London Symphony Chorus.  She has been privileged to work alongside several celebrated conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Marc Albrecht, Sir Andrew Davis, Mark Wigglesworth and Adrian Partington. 

Nia is regularly involved in youth and educational ventures.  She has conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in education projects, including conducting a series of concerts about the Symphony Orchestra, broadcast on the Welsh children’s television network, CYW on S4C, as well as a televised Christmas special.  She has also been involved in special ventures with BBC NOW, including conducting the orchestra in a programme for BBC Radio Cymru about new orchestral arrangements of 'Plygain' carols.  

Nia was conductor of the National Youth Choir of Wales in 2015, and directed the choir on tour in Argentina as part of the monumental Patagonia 150 celebrations.  She also directed the National Youth Training Choir of Wales in 2016.  She also conducted the South West Contingent of the Children in Need Choir in 2015.

Nia enjoys writing music for the young people with whom she works.  She has written a sung-through musical Nativity play, Glory to God, for the Cathedral Junior Choir, which has also been performed by two local primary schools.  She has published other liturgical compositions with Chichester Music Press. 

Nia currently works as a Producer in Religion and Ethics at the BBC, producing content for BBC Radio Wales and Radio 4.

New Organ Scholar Jinzi Feng-Huang joins us from London and will be working closely with our Cathedral musicians over the course of 2024-2025. Jinzi will be playing for many of our regular services, enriching our worship and will assist with the training of our choirs and choristers.