Nicholas, played organ for the Cantate Choir during it’s performance of Durufle’s Requiem in November 2011.
Nicholas O’Neill was born in Cheltenham in 1970, and currently lives in London, where he works as a composer and musician. In 1992 he was unanimously awarded first prize in the Norwich Festival Composition Competition. He won the Gregynog Young Composers’ Award in 1993, shared the Barbara Johnstone Composition Prize in 1995, and has been shortlisted for the Cornelius Cardew, Purcell, Oare String Orchestra, William Mathias and Vocalis composition awards. His music has been performed at the Leeds Festival of Contemporary Music, the Norwich and London Festivals of Contemporary Church Music and broadcast on Classic FM. He has recently been awarded the American Guild of Organists-Marilyn Mason Award 2012 for his Festive Voluntary.
Formerly head of Musical Techniques at Trinity College of Music, Organist to Brighton College and St. George’s RC Cathedral, Southwark, he is Associate Music Director of the Occam Singers, Chorus Master of the Parliament Choir and the Malcolm Sargent Festival Choir, President of Cantores Salicium and Associate Director of Music at St. Mary Abbots, Kensington. He also lectures for Birkbeck, University of London. Nick is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Saint Cecilia, on whose advisory panel he sits. He is also the Academy’s first Composer in Residence and has recently been appointed to the same post with the Parliament Choir.
By night Nick is keyboardist with rock band JEBO, who released their second album, Settle Up Or Settle Down last year. This and their critically acclaimed first album Sinking Without You are available from iTunes and Amazon.
Nick can be contacted via his website.