Jackie conducted a choir whilst still at school before gaining a place on the graduate course at the Guildhall School of Music, London. She was fortunate to study with many inspiring conductors and musicians. She was assistant organist at a London church and on graduating appointed head of music at two London schools. On moving to Somerset she founded and developed a prize winning youth orchestra playing in the UK and abroad. She has also coached a string quartet which came second in the National Festival of music for Youth. Jackie has been an accompanist for recitals and masterclasses at Bristol University and has taught in Bristol, locally in schools and at home. Many of her students have progressed to university or music college. She has home educated her three daughters all of whom are professional classical musicians. Music has always been her vocation and source of great joy and leading this choir is just that.

Kath has recently moved to Somerset and runs Chard Music with her husband Charles. She is an accomplished flautist and pianist who performs and teaches both locally and further afield. She spent many years in Russia directing the work of crescendo, a Christian outreach to professional classical musicians.

Mary has a long association with BCS, often appearing as a soloist for many of the large scale choral works in the repertoire. She studied singing with the mezzo-soprano Eileen Davis in Ohio earning a masters in vocal pedagogy. She has enjoyed a long career teaching both academic music and singing at Wells Cathedral School and Queen's College Taunton. Mary has sung in many locations across Europe. We are very fortunate to have Mary in the choir as our resident soprano soloist.

We are delighted to announce that Margaret Archibald has become our new president. Margaret's principal instrument is the clarinet. She is a  recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral player, teacher, coach and lecturer.  Margaret has travelled to Japan, the USA and Europe with specialist period instrument orchestras, performing on a wide range of period instruments from the late Baroque, classical and romantic periods. She was also a member of the choir of the London Oratory for seven years.

Margaret has recently launched Everyone Matters as an independent service dedicated to offering workshop and performance projects for the wider community. She was Education and Community Manager of the London Mozart Players for twenty-one years and devised a string of projects to engage groups from under 5's in nurseries and playgroups to over 90's in nursing homes and day care centres and she also created extensive programmes of music workshops for primary age children in out-of-school clubs and creative music recording workshops for adolescents in youth clubs.