Our Chorus Director- Victoria Pilley

An Australian conductor, educator and arts manager, Victoria completed a double Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and Music at Monash University in 2007, where she studied classical piano performance with Dr Kenji Fujimura and Glenn Riddle. In 2012, she relocated to Cardiff, where she is currently studying the Master of Music course in Choral Conducting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama under the tutelage of Neil Ferris and Sarah Tenant-Flowers. Victoria has also received tuition from a number of respected conductors including Simon Halsey, Rodney Eichenberger, Fred Sjöberg, Karen Grylls, Jo-Michael Sheibe and Alice Farnham.

Victoria is currently Musical Director for Gabalfa Community Choir and has recently been appointed Chorus Master for the Cumbria Rural Choirs. She also works across the United Kingdom as a guest conductor and workshop leader, including regular engagements with the Cardiff Polyphonic Choir and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s Community Choruses. Recent highlights include her debut at The Bridgewater Hall with The Severn Trent Choir, 2012 winners of Gareth Malone’s BBC television series ‘The Choir: Sing While You Work’, collaborating with Mid Wales Opera as Chorus Master for their recent production of Handel’s Acis & Galatea and working as Assistant Atelier Conductor to Maestro Carlo Pavese at the Worcester International Festival for Young Singers; the first non-competitive festival of its kind to be hosted in the UK.

A versatile young conductor, Victoria’s experience spans all age groups and she is equally at home working with professionals and amateurs alike. Previous experience includes positions of Assistant Chorus Master with the Royal Welsh College Chorus and as Choral Director with Blackburn High School, Melbourne University and Southern Voices (formerly the National Children’s Choir of Australia). She has also appeared as a presenter for the Australian Choral Conductor’s Education and Training (ACCET) Summer Schools.

Along with her work as a conductor, Victoria is an experienced Arts Manager, having worked with prominent Australian Arts organisations, Orchestra Victoria, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Musica Viva Australia.

 

Our Accompanist - Cilla Grant

Since studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Cilla has had a varied musical career – concerto soloist, repetiteur for two opera companies, orchestral pianist, resident pianist for instrumental courses including some run by the London Mozart Players' wind section, arranging standard SATB choral works for SSA, but mainly as an regular accompanist to several singers, particularly for Lieder recitals, and instrumentalists.

 

For five years, Cilla was Principal Pianist for the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in the UK and USA, then toured with a revue on the life of Daphne du Maurier and was musician aboard a luxury cruise ship, playing piano and bagpipes.

 

Since moving to Cumbria in 2003, she played for Cumbria Opera for three years and is currently pianist for Cumbria Rural Choirs, the Solway Singers, Gretna Choral and Cockermouth Harmonic Societies. She has been Official Accompanist for the Carlisle Music Festival, has played for concerts by the Penrith Singers, Keswick Choral Society, Wigton Choral Society, the Carnegie Singers and others, and played for Cumbria Opera's autumn 2010 concert. She has been pianist for the Lanercost Festival since its inauguration in 2004, for the Young Musician's Competition, for rehearsals of the Festival's major choral work, performing Rossini's Messe Solonelle with Ian Hare in 2005, Elgar's Sea Pictures with Carolyn Dobbin in 2007 giving two-piano concerts with David Sutton in 2006 and 2009 and playing in the performances of 'Edward' and Carmina Burana in 2008 and 2009