Judges For The Final of BBC Radio 3 Choir of the year
Senior figures from choral music and the arts judge every stage of the competition. The biographies of judges for the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year 2005 Final are detailed below.The judges for the Semi-final can be viewed here.


Richard Morrison
Richard Morrison is chief music critic of The Times. He also writes wide-ranging columns on music and other cultural areas for The Times and the BBC Music Magazine, and broadcasts regularly about music on Radio 3 and Classic FM. He studied music at Cambridge University, and earned a precarious living as a trombonist and organist for a few years before going into journalism. His centenary history of the London Symphony Orchestra was published to great acclaim last year. Married with three children, he lives in London where he has run a church choir for the past 27 years.


Susan Digby B Mus, Churchill Fellow
Susan Digby is the founder and Principal of The Voices Foundation, a leading national music education charity established in 1993. The Voices Foundation works in inner city and rural infant primary schools throughout England with an innovative singing-based programme involving every child and teacher.

In conjunction with The Voices Foundation, Susan also works extensively with children's and adult choirs. She founded Voices, a professional chamber choir and has been musical director of the Middlesex Bach Choir. Most recently, she is co-founder and artistic director of Voce, an award winning, adult chamber choir based in central London.

Susan Digby's highly acclaimed Voices Foundation Children's Choir is a multi-ethnic choir comprising children from throughout the UK. It has performed at State occasions including the VE Day Heads of State ceremony and the first National Holocaust Memorial Day, broadcast live on BBC 2.

Susan also regularly adjudicates at choral festivals and competitions, including the Coleraine Music Festival in Northern Ireland and the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year.


Bob Chilcott
Bob Chilcott is one of the most active composers and choral conductors in Britain, since 1997 working full time as a composer, and pouring his energy into choral composition, conducting, and promoting choral singing throughout the world.

He is well-known for his compositions for children's choir, including Can you hear me?, which he has conducted in the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, and the Czech Republic, and he is equally active as a composer of mixed-voice music. Of his larger works, The Making of the Drum has been extensively performed by choirs including The BBC Singers, the Tower New Zealand Youth Choir, the Chamber Choir of Europe, and the Taipei Chamber Singers.

Bob is Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers, with whom he works regularly in recordings and concerts, and has guest conducted the RIAS Kammerchor and the Elmer Iseler Singers. He has been a featured conductor for Europa Cantat in Sweden, Germany and Belgium, and in 2003 was the first non-American to conduct a National Honor Choir for ACDA. In 2004 he conducted at the renowned Dartington International Music Festival, was featured conductor for the Japan Choral Association, and the first foreign conductor of the Song Festival in Tallinn, Estonia.


Dr. John Evans
Dr. John Evans, Head of Music Programming, BBC Radio 3, is a graduate of the University of Wales, where he completed his doctoral studies on Benjamin Britten in 1984. He began his career as Administrator of the Britten-Pears School at Snape Maltings, followed by five years as the first Research Scholar at the Britten-Pears Library and Archive at Aldeburgh. He joined the BBC in 1985 as a producer for Radio 3, becoming Radio 3's Head of Music in 1993, and has been responsible for many of the Network's landmark projects, notably A Britten Evening, A Bernstein Day (live from New York), the Sony Award-winning weekend Live from Tanglewood, Danube Week, Barcelona Nights and Dutch Week. In addition to the Sony Gold, he has also won Prix Italia and Royal Philharmonic Society awards as Music Producer for the BBC Television film, Duke Bluebeard's Castle. As an academic, Dr Evans has lectured extensively in the UK and North America and his publications include Benjamin Britten: Pictures from a Life 1913-1976, A Britten Source Book, contributions to The Britten Companion and opera handbooks on Peter Grimes, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice. He is currently editing for publication Benjamin Britten's early private diaries.

Dr Evans is a Director of The Britten Estate, a Trustee of the Britten-Pears Foundation and Chairman of the theatre company, Concentric Circles. He has served on the juries of the Lisbon and Konrashin International Conducting Competitions, the Laurence Olivier Awards Opera Panel, the BBC Singer of the World in Cardiff and Chairs the Opera Jury for the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. In 2004 he sat on the jury for the Tosti International Singing Competition in Italy and chaired the jury for the Vienna Television Awards.


David Lawrence
David Lawrence is one of the UK's most versatile young conductors. His posts include Artistic Director of the Ulster Youth Choir, Choir Leader of the City of Birmingham Young Voices, Assistant Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, and he is a regular guest chorusmaster with the Netherlands Radio Choir. David has particular experience in contemporary music and has prepared and conducted premieres by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bob Chilcott, Graham Fitkin, Cornelius de Bondt to name a few. In 2005 he visits Australia on a workshop tour, and will prepare new works by Per Nørgård, James Wood and Pierre Boulez. David is a well known teacher of choral conducting and works as an education consultant and project leader for a number of orchestras and organisations. He is a National Adjudicator for the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year Competition and regularly conducts for BBC's 'Songs of Praise'. David holds the Guinness Record for conducting the largest choir in the UK, and later this year will conduct CBYV for the Royal Family at a special concert in the Ballroom of Buckingham Palace.