Ronald Corp

Ronald Corp is a composer and conductor; Founder and Artistic Director of the New London Orchestra and New London Children’s Choir; and Musical Director of the London Chorus and Highgate Choral Society.

He began conducting full-time in 1988 when he founded the New London Orchestra. With the Orchestra he has appeared in all the main London venues and at major festivals around the country. Ronald Corp has made it his mission to breathe new life into a wealth of little known music from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Orchestra’s reputation in this area results in frequent BBC broadcasts and 20 recordings on Hyperion. His lively introductions from the stage are a key part of his mission to make music accessible, an aim which also underlines the Orchestra’s education work in which Corp is often involved as a composer and workshop-leader.

Corp’s engagements have included concerts and recordings with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels Radio and Television Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared many times at the BBC Proms and works regularly with the BBC Singers, for whom he wrote a substantial choral work, Dover Beach in 2005.

Ronald Corp’s first major choral work And all the Trumpets Sounded was premièred in 1989 by Highgate Choral Society, who commissioned it. His cantata Laudamus (1994) was premièred at St. John’s Smith Square by the London Choral Society to great critical acclaim; its third performance was given at a Gala concert in the Royal Festival Hall.

More recent works include Dover Beach, commissioned and performed by the BBC Singers, the Missa San Marco, performed in St Mark’s Venice, and the String Quartet No.1 “The Bustard” premièred at the Wigmore Hall by the Maggini Quartet.

Many of Corp’s choral works are now on CD including the Christmas Mass (“Hark! Chantage at Christmas” on EMI); Flower Songs and other children’s Choir works (NLCC on Naxos), and a selection of choral music, Forever Child (Voces Cantabiles on Dutton), released to great critical acclaim in 2006.