Meet The Musical Directors

Adrian King has over thirty years experience in the music profession and in his much-loved career, he has enjoyed success and many accolades as a performer, voice coach, school music director, adjudicator, music arranger and conductor.

Adrian was born in Lincolnshire, England and his fondest musical memories are of singing in the rich choral tradition that exists throughout the UK. He received his musical training at the Guildhall School of Music, London specializing in Singing, Conducting, Piano and French Horn. He was also awarded an L.T.C.L from the Trinity College of Music, London.  Throughout his career, he has chosen to guide and inspire the future generation through teaching as well as in the pleasure of practical music making. 

Adrian invested a life’s love of music into his local community in Grimsby.  He recently migrated to Australia in August 2006 with his wife Helen and has two daughters, both professional string players, living on the Sunshine Coast. He is a proud grandfather of four and looks forward to building a life here.

For the last 20 years, Adrian has regularly conducted community and semi-professional orchestras and ensembles, adjudicated at festivals, accompanied in recital series, performances and music examinations. He has initiated and founded many music projects involving local and international renowned musicians and has seen the rich rewards that music can bring to a community. He has been at the helm of many thrilling performances at the Royal Albert Hall and with the BBC Philharmonic orchestra.

For fifteen years, Adrian was Director of Music at St.James’ Choir School, Grimsby.  He received a Teaching Award in 2000 for outstanding contribution in working with parents and the community in a school and was Artistic Director of the annual music exchange with the Edith Stein Schule, Germany and toured Iceland and Bruges with the Church Choir as a tenor lay-clerk. He founded the acclaimed St James’ Chamber Choir and has conducted works from Baroque to Modern.  Works performed include Mozart, Faure and Rutter Requiems, Magnificats by Bach, Vivaldi, and Rutter, Creation by Haydn, and The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins.

Adrian was also the Choral Director of the Grimsby Bach and Philharmonic Choirs and founded a semi-professional close harmony group ‘Anything Goes!’. Works conducted include Bach Motets, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bruckner Motets, Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia and Carl Orff ‘s Carmina Burana.

He ran a very popular “Singing for Pleasure” Adult Education Class for the local council for twenty years and as a voice coach, inspired many students both adult and youth to pursue music as a career.  His students have gone on to sing in Broadway musicals and the concert stage.

Adrian believes his personal passion for music making, his wealth of choral technique training and his encouraging approach during rehearsals has been a valued and winning formula in his career and looks forward to sharing his experiences and joy of music making with Noosa Chorale.  As the new Music Director, he looks forward to building on the excellent standard Leonard has created, whilst still maintaining the traditional values that the Noosa Chorale is so well known for.  He is excited about exploring new repertoire and engaging the Noosa local community in its concerts.

Deputy Music Director – Ken Evans

Ken Evans has often played an innovative and ground breaking role during his musical life in bridging the worlds of classical music and jazz.

Ken first appeared on the Melbourne jazz scene when he led the Geelong Jazz Group at the first Australian Jazz Convention in 1946.  His early musical activities included performing and recording with  Frank Johnston’s Fabulous Dixielanders and Graeme Bell’s Jazz Band, leading  the Steamboat Stompers to victory in the 1951 Battle of the Bands, playing French horn in the Geelong Symphony Orchestra, composing, particularly third stream instrumental music and playing  in some of the famous Melbourne dance bands of the 50’s.    

After a long professional engineering career in Australia and overseas, Ken left the corporate world in 1975 to pursue a full time career as a musician /educator/composer. After gaining the qualification T. Mus.A.(Trombone) he taught brass and directed ensembles in many of Melbourne’s Independent schools, played in bands as a freelance musician and recorded commercially with jazz, swing, reggae and studio groups including  Smacka Fitzgibbon, the Australian Cotton Club Orchestra, Jazz Foundations, Sound Experience and the Escalators.    

Versatility in moving between different musical styles was matched by his versatility on brass and wind instruments, playing at professional level on trombone, trumpet, French horn and tuba.

Melbourne’s loss was Noosa’s gain when Ken moved to Noosa in 1988, where has further extended his musical career.  In 1992 he formed the 16 member Jazz-Noosa Chorale specifically to premier his “Jazz Mass- for musicians remembered”, composed for the inaugural Noosa Jazz Festival. Since then, compositions which have also been premiered in Noosa include, “New Day” and “Hastings Street” from the “Noosa Suite”,  “Missa Concertante” and “Ameri-Czech Musings”, written for Noosa Chorale, and “Family Album”, a third stream wind quintet, commissioned by the Australia Council. For several years Ken has been the adjudicator at the Music Fest school band and choral competition and his contribution to Brisbane jazz through a very successful workshop program in the mid 90’s was greatly appreciated by the Brisbane Jazz Club. 

Since 1995 Ken, as a vocal member of Noosa Chorale, has helped choir members with section rehearsals, with learning tapes and with his advice, based on his deep appreciation of music of all kinds and his experience as a performer, arranger and composer.
Ken has also played in some of the orchestras that have accompanied the Chorale.

In 2002, Ken took the Chorale in a different direction with his concert, ‘Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II’, which offered a programme of Elizabethan madrigals, Purcell odes, Duke Ellington classics, a madrigal setting of Lennon& McCartney’s “Yesterday” plus Ken’s own “Ameri-Czech Musings”, “Family Album” and a movement from his “Jazz Mass”

His contribution to music is acknowledged in both the Oxford Companion to Australian Music and the Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz.