Ralph Allwood
Ralph Allwood is Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College. He was a pupil at Tiffin School, where he came under the influence of David Nield and Bruce Pullan, and graduated from Durham University in 1972 with the Eve Myra Kysh prize for music. He was later a member of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks, then became Director of Music at Pangbourne College. While Director of Music at Uppingham he founded the annual Eton Choral Courses for prospective choral scholars.
The six Eton Choral Courses are attended each year by four hundred singers aged between 16 and 20, broadcast and record evensongs and sequences for BBC Radio Three. He has conducted choral courses all over the world including in in Taiwan, Sydney, Barcelona, Harvard University, Boston, Kansas, Utrecht and Vancouver. He has been musical director for National Youth Music Theatre musicals for ITV, Granada and BBC2, and conducted on two occasions for the Edinburgh International Festival.
Eton College Chapel Choir, which he directs, tours abroad every year and has released ten recordings. He also directs the Rodolfus Choir, the Windsor and Eton Choral Society and the National Youth Choir of Wales
He is an advisor for Novello and Co, for the Voices Foundation and for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and a judge for the Choir of the Year Competition and the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.
He has recently been made an honorary Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and an honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.
Follow Us