Ronald Corp

Ronald Geoffrey Corp, (born 4 January 1951) is a composer, conductor and Anglican priest.

He is founder and artistic director of the New London Orchestra (NLO) and the New London Children's Choir.

His Christmas opera Wenceslas was premiered by the New London Children's Choir in 1982 and revived in 2008, while a more recent children's opera, The Ice Mountain, had three performances in 2010–11 by the same choir, and has been recorded.

When Ronald Corp founded the New London Orchestra in 1988, his conducting career was launched: engagements have included concerts and recordings with many orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra, as well as appearing at the BBC Proms.

Through his role as conductor and artistic director, Corp programmes and aims to bring to life repertoire written in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries which is rarely heard in concert.

His introductions from the stage are a key part of his mission to make music more accessible.

Together with the New London Orchestra, his championing of neglected music has resulted in some 20 recordings with Hyperion Records which feature composers such as Milhaud, Satie, Elinor Remick Warren, Virgil Thomson, John Foulds and the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz; and a series of Light Music Classics, four of them of British, and one each of American Light Music Classics and European Light Music Classics.

His first major choral work And All the Trumpets Sounded was premiered in 1989 by Highgate Choral Society, the composer stating, "My piece focuses on war, the dead and the trumpets of the last judgement".

Five years later, and combining text from the Te Deum with Wordsworth and Hopkins, the cantata Laudamus was premiered to great critical acclaim at St John's, Smith Square by the London Choral Society (now the London Chorus).

The New London Children's Choir was launched by Ronald Corp in 1991 with the aim of introducing children to the challenges and fun of singing and performing all types of music.

The Choir is one of the busiest and most successful children's ensembles in the country and has commissioned more than 40 new pieces and premiered numerous other works by composers including its patrons Louis Andriessen and Michael Nyman.

It has performed frequently at the Proms, made a number of film soundtrack and TV recordings, including the soundtrack to Star Wars Episode 1, 'The Phantom Menace' and been engaged for concerts and recordings with all the major London orchestras and opera companies.

The choir and its members have appeared regularly in major London concert halls working with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and sing onstage at the English National Opera.

Corp began writing music at a very early age.

Learning the piano gave him a means of hearing and notating the pieces.

He wrote throughout his teens and his undergraduate days at Oxford.

The list of his compositions is extensive and dominated by works for voice, whether solo, for small vocal groupings, church choirs or massive choral societies – Highgate Choral Society and the London Chorus have been regular performers over the years.

Corp is musical director of the London Chorus, a position he took up in 1994, and is also musical director of the Highgate Choral Society.

Corp was born and grew up in Wells, Somerset, later studying music at Oxford University.

Other substantial works for children's choir include Cornucopia, a cycle of songs with orchestra (1997), and its successor Kaleidoscope (2002) which includes a setting of 'The Owl and the Pussycat'.

Another large-scale work is the Piano Concerto No.1 (1997) which has received three performances by pianists Julian Evans and Leon McCawley and was described by one critic as,

He was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 1998 and a priest in 1999.

From 1998 to 2002, he served as a non-stipendiary minister (NSM) of St Mary's Church, Kilburn, London.

On the strength of this reputation, he was commissioned to write for the Farnham Youth Choir who were winners of their section in the 'Sainsbury Choir of the Year' (1998), resulting in Four Elizabethan Lyrics to texts by Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson and Chidiock Tichborne.

From 2002 to 2007, he served as a NSM at St Mary's Church, Hendon.

In 2003 BBC Radio 3 commissioned a major work for the BBC Singers – an a cappella setting of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.

Following his work with youth choruses and the formation of the New London Children's Choir, Corp also established himself as a composer for young voices.

Since 2007, he has served as a NSM at the Church of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn.

All three parishes in which he has served, are in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

He is a member of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC).

See also New London Orchestra

Among his orchestral works are Symphony No. 1 (2009) which evokes "a journey from darkness to light" and the programmatic triptych Guernsey Postcards (2004) with its depictions of a local fair, Pembroke Bay and St. Peter Port, commissioned by the Guernsey Camerata.

The issue in late 2010 by Corp and the NLO of the first digital recording of Rutland Boughton's opera The Queen of Cornwall was designated 'Disc of The Month' in Opera magazine, March 2011 and 'Editor's Choice' in Gramophone, September 2011.

See also New London Children's Choir

His interest in literature is evident in the many song-sets devoted to settings of a single poet, e.g. The Music of Francis Thompson which received its première at Benslow Music Trust in January 2010.

An earlier set, The Music of Whitman, had its première at the 2011 Tardebigge English Song Festival in Worcestershire, performed by Mark Stone (baritone) and Stephen Barlow (piano); while The Music of Browning was first performed in October of the same year as part of the Little Venice Music Festival with Robert Presley (baritone) and Andrew Robinson (piano).

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to music.

Corp attended the Southern Theological Education and Training Scheme to prepare for the priesthood.

In March 2013, the baritone Lee Tsang premiered The Music of Larkin at Middleton Hall in Hull, Yorkshire.

There are also discrete songs such as the humorous The Bath, and song-cycles such as Flower of Cities which takes London as its unifying theme.