Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir

Our AccompanistColin Druce

Colin is a dynamic organ recitalist, pianist, accompanist, and teacher, renowned for his musicianship, versatility, and sight-reading skills. Colin is very well known in his local area of Leamington Spa and Warwick and further afield as a concert organist and pianist, as a teacher, and as an accomplished accompanist, not least through his long association with the Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir.

Colin is a multi-faceted musician; as well as his concert work, he is a freelance organist and staff accompanist at Warwick University and he has a thriving private piano and organ teaching practice in Warwickshire, with pupils gaining music scholarships to prestigious universities and one of his previous singing pupils now a member of The King's Singers. Colin is rehearsal accompanist and repetiteur for both the Royal Leamington Spa Bach Choir and the Warwick and Kenilworth Choral Society. He also takes sectional rehearsals, and occasionally deputises for the conductor.

Colin has a busy schedule of concert performances with choral societies, singers, and instrumental groups. He is engaged by Warwick University and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire to accompany their concerto competitions and scholarship/bursary audition programme. He has in recent years worked with celebrated English bass Sir John Tomlinson, and with Roderick Williams, one of this country's most sought after baritones, who recently sang at the King's Coronation. Colin has a prodigious talent for playing at sight, and he has gained a reputation for his ability to step in at the last moment - saving many a concert from disaster!

Colin has played for degree ceremonies for Warwick University, Coventry University, Warwickshire College, and the Open University and produces programmes that celebrate the day's accomplishments and importance and enhance the significance of the graduation ceremony for those in attendance. Colin has recently taken up the virtual pipe organ Hauptwerk system, which combines state-of-the-art software along with world-class sampled instruments, raising the bar for the digital organ world. The system has been installed onto Colin's existing digital organ console, which means that using the latest virtual instrument technology Colin can perform on the world's foremost classical and cathedral organs; he has recently brought his organ to venues and used this technology to enhance performances for the Bach choir. He also has a small chamber organ version that can be used for continuo performances.

Colin had a successful career in church music before becoming freelance, and still plays regularly at St Mary's Warwick, Coventry Cathedral and Holy Trinity Stratford.

For more details of Colin's activities, please visit colindruce.co.uk.