Edward Wickham is a leading exponent of choral music, as director, educator and scholar. He has been the Director of Music at St Catharine’s College since 2003, is an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Music where he has delivered courses on Renaissance music, notation & source studies and choral skills; and for several years was Course Director of the MMus in Choral Studies. Outside of his University work, Dr Wickham founded and directed the vocal ensemble The Clerks, and currently is the Artistic Director of The Oxford and Cambridge Singing School.
Dr Wickham studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford where he was a choral scholar. As a post-graduate he switched to music and received his PhD from King’s College, London for a study into 15th century vocal music. In 2003 he took up his current position at St Catharine’s College, where he is responsible for student and children’s choirs, both of which record, tour and broadcast regularly. He has throughout his career maintained a busy schedule both as a pedagogue, conductor and academic. Soon after leaving Oxford he established the vocal ensemble The Clerks, with which he made over two dozen recordings, and received many plaudits including the Gramophone Early Music Award. The Clerks has given concerts in many of the major UK and European festivals and venues, numerous broadcasts on British, European and US radio, and undertaken coast-to-coast tours of the USA. As director of The Clerks, his recordings and performances of Renaissance music have made a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of repertoire. He is equally engaged with contemporary music, commissioning new work from a range of leading choral composers.
Dr Wickham is much in demand as a choral coach, and has given workshops and masterclasses throughout the UK, USA and Europe; he was also for several years a guest conductor at the Tokyo Cantat Festival. He is a committed advocate of choral outreach, and is the founder and Artistic Director of The Oxford and Cambridge Singing School.
As well as directing the College Choir, in 2008 Dr Wickham formed the St Catharine’s Girls’ Choir, the first and, until recently, only college-based choir for girls in the country. Under his direction, the choirs of St Catharine’s have made several recordings – latterly on the Resonus label – and toured as far afield as China and the United States. The choirs have gained a reputation for ambitious and innovative programming, which has included commissioning contemporary works and collaborations with musicians from non-Western traditions. The Girls’ Choir has given several live broadcasts on Radio 3 and 4 (In Tune, The Choir and Sunday Worship).
Dr Wickham enjoys teaching in a participative style; students in his classes will always have the chance to get to know repertoire from ‘the inside’, through singing and engaging with primary sources. As both an academic and a practitioner, he is committed to nurturing the next generation of scholar-performers, with an intellectual curiosity which complements creative understanding.
