![]() He has always been an enthusiastic promoter of music for children and founded the annual Birkdale Festival of Music and Performing Arts. In 1996, Douglas was appointed to the post of Director of Music at Birkdale Prep School here in Sheffield and has been for many years Organist and Choirmaster at St Andrew’s United Reformed Church, where he also helped design the present organ.ĭouglas’ keen interest in music and computing also stretches to the brass band and orchestral traditions he is able to play the euphonium and trombone. Later he became organist at All Souls Church, Blackman Lane in Leeds. Since then he has lived and worked in Yorkshire, first as Director of Music at Moorlands Preparatory School, Leeds and also as Principal Cantoris Alto Lay-Clerk at Leeds Parish Church under Simon Lindley. ![]() Part of his professional training included the study of Church Music and Palaeography with Anthony Greening and Choral Conducting with Brian Wright and later Gwyn Arch, conductor and arranger of the highly acclaimed Bulmershe Girls’ Choir.Īfter a spell teaching in West Sussex, Douglas moved to Northamptonshire where he sang in the choir of St Matthew’s Church (for whom Benjamin Britten wrote much commissioned music) and later served as organist for a time at St Mary the Virgin, Higham Ferrers. He managed to continue his work in Berkshire at weekends whilst studying for his Graduate Diploma at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and completed his Teacher training at Berkshire College of Education in his home town of Woodley. During his last two years in Berkshire Douglas was assistant Director of Music at All Saint’s, Wokingham and afterwards at St Paul’s, Wokingham. The following year he returned to Woodley Parish Church where he acted as joint Organist and Choirmaster, building a large RSCM choir of about 30 boy choristers and a mixed choir of altos, tenors and basses consisting largely of teenagers and ex-trebles. At fourteen he gained his first organist’s appointment at St Mary’s Church, Castle Street in Reading and took on his first role as conductor of the Reading Musical Society Orchestra and official accompanist to the society’s chorus. Since joining the choir of St Alban’s Church, Dartford at the age of ten, Douglas’ career as a church musician has never looked back. He lived his early years in Kent where he began his musical studies at the piano at the age of seven. ![]() Douglas was born in Greenwich, London in 1956.
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