Director

Rupert Preston Bell has been involved with cathedral music all his life. He was a boy chorister at Rochester Cathedral, and as a student at Cambridge sang with the chapel choir of Jesus College, where he met his wife Caroline. They both still sing with the Cambridge Taverner Choir, of which Rupert is deputy conductor. He has been an alto Lay Clerk at Lincoln and Southwark cathedrals, and deputised at a number of London churches. He is now Director of Music at the church of King Charles the Martyr in Tunbridge Wells and his work as Director of the concert series Music at King Charles was recognised by the Tunbridge Wells International Music Festival who gave him their annual award for services to music in the region in 2011. Since 2013 he has also directed Cambridge Renaissance Voices.

Organist

Michael Bacon read Music at Liverpool University, where he studied the organ with Terence Duffy, Organist of the Metropolitan Cathedral. Subsequently taking lessons with
Thomas Trotter and Anne Marsden, he was for ten years Director of Music at King Charles the Martyr, where his performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Nativité du Seigneur was a feature of the Christmas celebrations. He is now Principal Organist at King Charles, and has given many recitals at the church and elsewhere, notably two concerts in France on Classical French organs in conjunction with the King Charles Singers, and as accompanist of that choir he has also become accepted to play for Evensongs at Westminster Abbey - a carefully guarded honour! In November 2013 he concluded a journey through the complete Bach organ works, having played all 300+ pieces at concerts or services. As a Sound Engineer for Radio 3, Michael has recently had particular responsibility for organ music, as well as specialising in recording early music performances.

Choir members

Other choirs which members of the King Charles Singers have sung with include: The, Cambridge University Chamber Choir, King's and Trinity College Choirs Cambridge, London Symphony Chorus, The Bach Choir, The BBC Symphony Chorus, The Holst Singers, Matchbox Opera, The Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the chapel choir of the Tower of London.

Further reading

Notes on the choir's founding principles
Programme notes from our millennium concert with the Gregorian Singers, April 2000