Update – Because of the present restrictions due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the application date for the 2020/21 Young Conductor’s Junior Fellowship has been extended until 11th July.  Dates for interview and auditions will be decided once the situation becomes clearer. In addition the Trustees have decided to increase the Bursary attached to the Fellowship to £1,000.

The Joyful Company of Singers invites applications from young choral conductors for a 12-month fellowship commencing September 2020. The person appointed will wherever possible sing with the JCS, conduct sectional rehearsals as appropriate and deputise for the Music Director, Peter Broadbent, from time to time. The JCS is based in Central London and rehearsals are usually on Monday and/or Thursday evenings.

The fellowship will provide the opportunity for a young choral conductor to gain experience rehearsing and performing with a choir which performs a wide variety of challenging music at a high standard, and to receive mentoring from an experienced and respected choral conductor, for which time will be allocated during the fellowship. This should form a useful part of a young conductor’s educational development as well as providing important experience for her/his portfolio.

The Fellow will work on several projects in order to gain maximum exposure to the different styles of music and performance that make up the repertoire of the JCS, and the JCS will endeavour to provide a showcase opportunity where the young conductor performs with the choir. The Fellowship will carry a bursary of £ 750.

Ideally, applicants should hold a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting, but experience will carry equal weight.  Application should be made by email, attaching a full CV and the contact details of two referees, to info@jcos.co.uk

‘The JCS Conducting Fellowship was the perfect springboard in the early stage of my career: a stellar choir which can (and does) tackle everything and anything, a highly-supportive and experienced mentor in Peter, and excellent performance opportunities in great venues. I was exposed to repertoire any other ‘amateur’ choir (and many professional ones) would baulk at, giving me a confidence – especially in, but not limited to, contemporary music – that I doubt I’d have found anywhere else. The Singers really are a ‘joyful company’ – warm and encouraging but shot through with musicianship of the highest calibre and standards to match. I can’t recommend it highly enough.’                    

Helen Smee, Junior Fellow (2013-14)

“I loved my time with JCS: the music, the people, the supportive atmosphere and space to make mistakes and learn from them. I am so very grateful for the opportunity and would highly recommend the Fellowship to anyone wishing to gain more experience in conducting a sizeable chamber choir.”

Louisa Denby   Junior Fellow  2016

More about the choir – The Joyful Company of Singers first came to prominence when it won the “Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year” competition in 1990.  Since then concert performances have taken the Choir to most of the leading UK festivals including the BBC Proms, with regular concerts in Europe and broadcasts in many countries as well as on BBC and Classic FM.  To date, the JCS has a discography of over 30 CDs, including several recordings with the late Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia, with whom the JCS had a long association. The JCS has recorded and given concerts with the Bournemouth Symphony, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. However, the vast majority of its repertoire is a capella with an emphasis on the contemporary repertoire. The JCS has given over 35 first performances of music by many leading British and European composers.

Peter Broadbent’s Joyful Company of Singers, one of the most agile and flexible choirs in the land, as comfortable tussling with today’ s music as they are gliding through plainchant.

Geoff Brown The Times

The Joyful Company of Singers’ immaculate performances are pure joy from first to last.

MusicWeb International  

The Joyful Company delivers lovely sounds, from a full but unstrained fortissimo to the astonishing quiet chord before the last lines of ‘Tous les droits’….

 Robert Maycock, BBC Music Magazine

From a properly urgent, anxious start with the opening chorus, Kraemer sustained both dramatic tension and musical meaning throughout. His excellent choir (rather than the mere solo quartet, or at most a double quartet, that some musicologists argue was all the “chorus” Bach would have had) was the 30-strong Joyful Company of Singers, lucid and stylish.

David Murray, Financial Times

… this is a thoroughly idiomatic reading of Rachmaninoff’s passionate choral masterpiece, which was run off in a mere two weeks during a concert tour in 1915 to support the Tsarist war effort. There’s no forced ‘Russianness’ and Peter Broadbent has a sure grasp of the detailed ‘choral orchestration’ that was one of the gifts to Russian music of the piece’s posthumous dedicatee S.V. Smolensky.

Brian Morton, Choir & Organ

…they are undoubtedly one of the great choirs of the world with their virtuosity and intense spirit, and I am delighted that they have interpreted my music so movingly and so authentically.

Jonathan Harvey