Previous Music Directors

Joe Tobin

Musical Director, 2023 - 2026

Joe is a prize-winning conductor, composer and singer. He works with many leading professional and amateur ensembles in the UK and internationally. In addition to his role in Newbury Choral Society, Joe is the Musical Director of Penshurst Choral Society, and Founder and Musical Director of the professional choir, the Lerion Consort. As Director of Music at St John the Divine church in Kennington, he leads one of the most exciting church music programmes in the country with over a hundred singers in its choirs.

Joe was first introduced to music as a chorister of St James the Greater church, Leicester. He read music at the University of York and founded Animas, a student chamber choir that continues its leading role today. He proceeded to the world-leading choral conducting postgraduate course at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Patrick Russill, taking orchestral conducting lessons with former Newbury Choral Society director Cathal Garvey. In October 2024, Joe represented the UK in the Eric Ericson Award, the world’s foremost choral conducting competition, in Stockholm, Sweden.

In addition to his conducting career, Joe is a dedicated teacher and advocate for musical education and equality. His students have gone on to secure scholarships at leading schools, colleges, universities, and conservatoires. In his spare time Joe can usually be found at home in Ealing with his tortoise, Otto, poring over scores of obscure sheet music and history.

July 2026

Cathal Garvey

Musical Director, 2019 - 2022

Since moving from his native Ireland to London in 2009, Cathal Garvey has conducted Southern Sinfonia, London International Orchestra, Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra, I Maestri, London Repertoire Orchestra, London Medical Orchestra, King's College London Symphony Orchestra, Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra, Lambeth Orchestra and Morley College Choir, and was Chorus Master and Assistant Conductor for two seasons at Grange Park Opera. He is currently on the conducting staff of the Royal Academy of Music.

In 2015, Cathal founded the Ulysses Symphony Orchestra, and in 2017, took its professional sister-orchestra, the London Ulysses Orchestra on a six-city tour of China, which included a performance at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Cathal was appointed Musical Director of Newbury Choral Society in 2009, and from 2015 to 2020 was Musical Director of Billingshurst Choral Society.

Cathal began violin and piano studies in Cork at an early age, continuing at the Cork School of Music and later reading music at University College Cork. After completing his Master's Degree in Conducting, he studied for two years at the prestigious College of Moscow Conservatory. Cathal began his career as an Opera Chorus Master working for most of Ireland’s major opera companies, including Opera Ireland, Opera Theatre Company, Anna Livia Opera Festival, Opera South and Lyric Opera. He worked on over fifty productions with these companies, also regularly acting as Assistant Conductor.

During his ten years in Dublin, Cathal conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Dublin Baroque Players, and between 2001 and 2009, was Principal Conductor of the Dublin Orchestral Players, and Musical Director of Dun Laoghaire Choral Society. In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary ARAM by the Royal Academy of Music.

Cathal left NCS to take up the position of Music Director of Winchester Symphony Orchestra

September 2022

Leo Hussain

Principal Conductor, 2003 - 2019

One of a new generation of versatile and dynamic British conductors, LEO HUSSAIN received his training at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, and has since built up close working relationships with some of the world’s finest conductors – Rattle and Gergiev chief among them.

From 2003-6 he was Principal Conductor of the University of London Symphony Orchestra, with whom projects included Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Shostakovich’s Eighth; other orchestras with whom he has appeared include Hamburger Symphoniker, City of London Sinfonia, Southbank Sinfonia, Salomon Orchestra, London Concertante and Corinthian Chamber Orchestra. Since 2003 he has been Music Director of Newbury Choral Society, with whom he performs three times a year. Reflecting his interest in contemporary music (he founded the Kettle’s Yard Ensemble with the composer John Woolrich), he has collaborated with composers including Colin Matthews and Mark-Anthony Turnage with the London Contemporary Music Group, and recently conducted an acclaimed new production of Birtwistle’s Punch & Judy for ENO at the Young Vic.

Equally at home in the opera pit as on the concert platform, Leo was for two years Head of Music for English Touring Opera’s Spring tours, for whom he conducted Figaro, The Magic Flute, Cosi fan Tutte and Donizetti’s Mary Queen of Scots. He has conducted at the Batignano Festival, and for Glyndebourne on Tour (Pelléas et Mélisande and La Cenerentola), Aberdeen International Youth Festival (Falstaff), Opera Holland Park (Cosi fan Tutte), and Opera North (Rigoletto). In Europe, he has worked for the Opera de Paris (The Rake’s Progress), and is a regular visitor to the Salzburg Festival, where he has conducted Pelléas et Mélisande with the Berlin Philharmonic as Sir Simon Rattle’s assistant, and Benvenuto Cellini with the Vienna Philharmonic as assistant to Valery Gergiev (which led directly to an invitation to St Petersburg to conduct at the Mariinsky Theatre). He will return this season for Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and Die Zauberflöte.

Engagements in 2008 included Benvenuto Cellini, Les Pecheurs des Perles and La Damnation de Faust for the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. It was a year of notable debuts: with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the ENO (Aida) and with the Kyusyu Symphony Orchestra in Japan in November 2008.

This year begins with Leo conducting Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre at the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels in March, as well as Little England: Scenes from a Small Island as part of the young singers programme. July will see him at the Aix-en-Provence festival assisting Sir Simon Rattle with a performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. As newly appointed Music Director of the Landestheater, Salzburg, he will begin the 2009 season with a production of The Marriage of Figaro in September.

February 2009