Musical Director
Paul Carr
Since November 2015 Paul Carr has been Musical Director to Selly Park Singers. He is a freelance organist, recitalist, choral director, accompanist and teacher. Paul trained with Dr Roy Massey MBE at Hereford Cathedral and Professor David Saint at Birmingham Conservatoire, graduating with first-class honours. Paul was Director of Music at St Paul’s, Birmingham for thirteen years until 2016, President of the Birmingham Organists Association for six years until 2014, and in June 2015 was awarded Honorary Membership of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
He has regularly directed other choirs including The St Ignatius Singers, St Bartholomew’s Penn Church Choir and the specially-formed Black Country Music Education Hubs’ Choir in preparation for their appearance as part of the BBC Proms Youth Choir at the First Night of the Proms, performing John Adams’ ‘Harmonium’ with the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra.
As an accompanist Paul often works with Birmingham Bach Choir (Director Paul Spicer), The City of Birmingham Choir (Director Adrian Lucas) including a CD of Christmas music, The Henry Ley Singers (Director Richard Dawson) recording a CD of choral music by Clive Russell in Keble College Chapel Oxford. Paul has toured with choirs to Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and the USA. In April 2015 he was organist for The City of Birmingham Choir’s concert tour to Paris which included accompanying at Notre-Dame Cathedral and solo performances at La Madeleine and St-Germain-des-Prés. In April 2017 he accompanied the choir’s tour to Vienna, including a performance of Handel’s Messiah in the Stephansdom with the Wiener Domorchester. As an exam accompanist Paul is regularly engaged by music hubs across the West Midlands.
As an organist, Paul is currently Musician in Residence at Holy Trinity Parish Church Wordsley, Stourbridge and Organist to St Bartholomew’s Parish Church Penn, Wolverhampton. His concert and recital schedule takes him all over the UK. He has also performed in Germany and France, including return recital engagements at Lambertikirche in Münster, Magdeburg Dom and Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. There have been several visits to the USA where highlights include solo recitals at Washington National Cathedral and St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, and a dedication concert on the new organ in Fourth Church, Chicago.
For over thirty years Paul has given monthly organ recitals in the Midlands, his current series Sunday Afternoon Organ Music takes place at Holy Trinity Wordsley on the first Sunday of every month at 3pm. He is Artistic Director to the Thursday Live series at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham, where he also plays around half of the recitals and recorded his critically acclaimed début solo CD French Flavours. During the toughest pandemic lockdown periods Paul presented online recitals from both St Chad’s Cathedral and Holy Trinity Wordsley and has continued to produce regular recordings for the Thursday Live YouTube channel.
For further information please visit: www.paulcarr.co.uk
Accompanist and Repetiteur
Dick Price
For many years Dick has been SPS’s accompanist and repetiteur. He started his accompanying activities by playing for an Eb bombardon player in the school music competition. He enjoyed this so much that he went on to accompany soloists at the Midland School of Singing, played for Argosy Musical Theatre Company and was deputy accompanist and conductor at Canoldir MVC. He is also one of the organists at Selly Oak Methodist Church.
Some Members of Selly Park Singers
Sandy Cresswell
I have been a member of Selly Park Singers for many years. I love everything about the choir – we sing a very wide variety of things, choral classics to the Beatles, and more! We are a very friendly group, who share the common interest of music and performing it. Through the choir I have formed my own folk band: The Sandy Band and we have performed in Selly Park Singers concerts. I have learned a great deal musically and have made some very good friends. For me it is the highlight of my week; I love it.
Sue Partridge
I have been singing actively as a soprano in choral groups since the age of nineteen. I have brought up two sons to be singers and all round music lovers. I also sing with Birmingham Bach Choir, but joined SPS in 2018 in order to try out a wider range of repertoire and a more relaxed sing. I love the challenge of singing really high and getting the rhythm right in jazz songs (not easy!). I provide occasional vocal coaching sessions for the choir.
I am the current SPS treasurer with a nerdish interest in financial planning, online accounting and balancing the books.
Jenny Marris
I sang in a choir when I was at school and always promised myself I would sing again when I retired. Encouragement to join Selly Park Singers came at just the right moment and I have been a member of the choir since 2015. We have learned and performed such a huge variety of music over that time. It is a joy when the lines of new music begin to feel familiar and we build the confidence to sing them in public. We are so lucky to have a musical director who takes our interest in singing seriously and makes the rehearsals fun. I felt welcomed from the very beginning despite my lack of experience and non-musical background.
Béatrice Damamme-Gilbert
I joined Selly Park Singers in 2017. I had once attended a concert, invited by a neighbour who is a long-standing member, and much enjoyed it.
I hadn’t been a member of a choir for nearly 44 years ! but missed singing on a regular basis. In the meantime my voice had changed from Soprano to Alto and I felt very rusty when I started but I was made very welcome and other alto singers I sat next to helped me to get my voice (almost) back. I am grateful that the choir is so friendly and supportive. I often feel I am not on top of my part but I thoroughly enjoy the togetherness and the variety of musical experience our musical director introduces us to. He manages to be both fun, encouraging and musically stimulating, challenging us to get to our best possible performance.
Laura Contrasti
I joined SPS in November 2022 as I’ve always found that singing with others makes me happy and I wanted to get back into singing after many years of not belonging to a choir. I studied some music in my teenage years, but I am otherwise quite illiterate when it comes to reading music; however, I’ve felt very welcome by everyone from the start and I have really enjoyed meeting new people and learning new pieces of music. Thank you!
Annette Sampson
I joined the choir when I first arrived in Birmingham in 2000. Friends from church invited me to come. I have been singing in choirs since the age of 5 years and every time I have moved I have tried to find another. I love the challenge of new music along with the singing of ‘old favourites’. As we are not just a ‘Choral Society ‘ we get to sing a great variety of styles from the truly classical choral ‘work’ to Cole Porter and very much more recent. We are not at all ’stuffy’ trying always to make everyone feel at home with us and part of us.
I always go home energised and singing!