Our team
Mark Dancer
CONDUCTOR
Mark Dancer is Director of Music and Organist of St Peter's Church, Petersfield, Conductor of the Petersfield Choral Society and Musical Director of the Portsmouth Festival Choir.
He read music at Durham University and was Organ Scholar of the College of St Hild and St Bede, studying the organ with Alan Thurlow and David Hill. He holds the Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) and the Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM) in organ performance. An accomplished singer, Mark was a chorister at Ewell Parish Church (Surrey) and studied singing with renowned operatic bass Hervey Alan.
He has performed in St Paul's Cathedral, Birmingham Cathedral and Town Hall, Portsmouth Cathedral, Guildford Cathedral, All Saints, Ryde, etc., as well as for the Petersfield Musical Festival and Portsmouth Festivities. His popular summer series of organ recitals in Petersfield will reach its twenty-first season in 2022, following the Covid intermission and will feature music by César Franck, whose 200th anniversary of birth falls this year. Mark was for some time Director of the Free Church Choir Union National Festival and President of the City of Portsmouth & District Organists’ Association.
Playing with “sparkle, imagination and a wide dynamic palette”, Mark Dancer is described as a “fine musician and sensitive accompanist” by Ann Pinhey in the Petersfield Post. He is very much in demand as choral accompanist and répétiteur, as well from instrumentalists and singers. Recent performances include a concert of piano duets with Emilie Capulet in the 2022 Petersfield Musical Festival performing works by Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (arranged by Hugo Ulrich), as well as Haydn’s Mariazeller-Messe, Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 2 in the opening choral concert of the Festival.
His YouTube channel, Mark Dancer – Anacrusis Music, set up in 2020, now contains well over one hundred video recordings of organ works.
Phillip Young
REHEARSAL ACCOMPANIST
Phillip Young
Philip has been accompanying and conducting since schooldays in Ipswich and college years at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he studied English and Music, apart from two years in Huddersfield, he has lived in Petersfield since 1972, working mainly at Bedales School, where he taught music and classical civilisation and held the post of Director of Studies from 1994 until his retirement in 2007.
He has been involved in many music and theatre groups in Petersfield, particularly the Musical Festival, which he has chaired from 1990 to 2003 and since 2008. He accompanies and shares the musical direction of the Petersfield Theatre Group and is a long-standing member of Winton Players. As Music Adviser to the Southern Orchestral Concert Society from 1983 to the society's closure in 2012 he wrote programme notes for around 600 orchestral and chamber works. Philip was named 'Petersfield Personality of the Year' at the 2013 Life in Petersfield Awards.
Marcia Fielden
MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY
If you would like to know more, or are interested in joining the Choral Society, do contact me via the contact form . We welcome all singers, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. You do not have to be able to sight-read, although familiarity with reading a score is useful. We will be delighted to welcome you.
Paul Spicer
Festival Conductor
is one of today’s most distinguished choral conductors and is in great demand for his inspirational choral workshops. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir, is founder- director of the acclaimed Finzi Singers, and is Professor of Choral Conducting at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He is a composer, writer and broadcaster, and a leading authority on twentieth-century British music.
Paul has been Resident Conductor at Petersfield Musical Festival since 2005
Kate Perry
Chairman
Kate is local to Petersfield and a very experienced Choral singer