Market Harborough Choral Society
Founded: 1967
Music Director
Emma is a professional choral conductor, soprano and teacher of singing, conducting, violin and viola. Having graduated from Bristol University with a BA(Hons) in Music and French in 2010 and from Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama with an MA in Choral Conducting in 2012, she returned to Leicester.
She currently works as the Musical Director at St. James the Greater Church in Leicester where she directs the adult choir as well as the children’s choir. Emma also directs three Leicester-based adult choirs: Fosse Singers, Semper Singers and Corah as well as The Market Harborough Choral Society. She also runs the SoundCafe choir for homeless and vulnerably housed people in Leicester.
She regularly performs classical and jazz recitals with her husband Mark, for babies and toddlers through the Leicestershire company ‘BabyGigs’.
Emma and her husband also perform with a vocal quintet, The Juliet Consort.
Prior to her former post of Music Director at All Saints Church in Loughborough, Emma was a choral director at Leicester Cathedral where she trained the choristers and taught singing to primary school children through the DioSing! project. She has also taught class singing at Stoneygate College and Leicester Preparatory School where she was joint Head of Music.
Performing highlights include singing the soprano solo in Schubert: Mass in G live on BBC 1 as part of the Easter Day service broadcast live from Leicester Cathedral in 2014. She sang as part of the choir for the reinterment services for Richard III and subsequently commissioned a primary schools cantata ‘The King in the Car Park’ for which she conducted the première. Later that year she conducted Fosse Singers as they sang the National Anthems for all three Rugby World Cup games which took place at Leicester’s King Power Stadium.
Emma conducted the Galenicals Chamber Orchestra in her second year and the Bristol University Chamber Choir in her final year. Emma has also been the Musical Director of Redland Green Community Chorus in Bristol, Cheddar Male Choir and St. Cecilia Singers of Rushden, Northamptonshire.
Accompanist
Oksana King is a pianist and piano teacher based in Brixworth. She was educated in St Petersburg Conservatoire, where she completed her Performer’s Diploma with Distinctions. She performed as a soloist throughout Russia and the Czech Republic, where she also accompanied choirs, instrumentalists and singers.
In the UK, Oksana performed solo recitals at Stowe Music School (as part of the Chung Steinway concerts) and at All Saints Church in Brixworth and has been engaged as an accompanist with Market Harborough Choral Society since 2015.
From 2016 Oksana has performed piano recitals at every annual Brixworth Music Festival; in the most recent 2022 festival also as a duet with Andrew King.
Oksana teaches piano at all levels and has particular expertise in the prevention of repetitive strain injury. She is an accompanist and a piano teacher at the Peterborough school.
For private lessons and accompaniments for examinations and concerts, Oksana can be contacted on 07530 330914.