About The Collati Singers
Trefor Farrow built a tradition of music and music theatre at Devonport High School for Boys, from where he retired in 2005. Many of his pupils from the school are now pursuing high-flying professional careers in music around the world. He has directed choir and music groups around Plymouth and the South Hams for many years, including the Plymouth G&S Fellowship, City of Plymouth Musical Theatre Company, Opera Southwest, the South West Chamber Choir, the Lupridge Singers, the Brent Singers, and the Stoke Sunday Choir. He currently directs The Damerel Belles as well as The Collati Singers.
He started The Collati Singers in 2013 with his wife Gillian (Webster, soprano), initially inviting people from various choirs which Trefor has conducted over the years to join, alongside new singers who responded to recruitment posters, and the choir has expanded mainly by word of mouth since then. They wanted to create a choir for more experienced singers to sing challenging a cappella music mainly from the Renaissance and early Baroque period and by twentieth and twenty-first century composers.
Gillian Webster has worked professionally in music since 1987, teaching piano, leading creative music and vocal workshops, composing music for many community plays, dance-dramas and community musicals, and also mentoring young people with their own compositions for film, drama and concerts. The majority of this self-employed composing and mentoring work has been for Dartmoor-based developmental community company MED Theatre www.medtheatre.co.uk, where she has also been employed three days a week as Company Development Officer since 2009. She has composed for several Arts Council funded projects, a TV advertisement for Kent’s Cavern, for two computer games, a short musical Bovey Tracey Primary School, for Totnes Young People's Theatre and pieces to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day in Exeter and to celebrate a choir exchange between South Brent and Châteauneuf-du-Faou. She composed, sang and played keyboards in the bands Kan-Kan, NowPiscesNow and Double-Edged Pleasure with The Boomtown Rats vocalist and drummer Simon Crowe (with whom she also had two children), in duo Fine Fury with Tony Bayliss, and ceilidh band Five Bar Gait. Prior to this she did a degree and PhD in Physics in Exeter University. She has also delivered 'Singing for the Brain' sessions for the Alzheimers Society and is a member of the Performing Rights Society. Recent self-employed music work for MED Theatre includes composition for 'Rocks' community play (six performances March 2019), music mentor for the 'Dartmoor Rivers' young people's composing project (two performances December 2018), and composer for 'Stapledon' community play with Trefor Farrow (three performances in Ashburton, September 2018. She also composed the music with Trefor, for MED Theatre's Arts Council funded project 'Moor Voices' (September 2020), for alone for 'The Magistrate' radio play (March 2021), 'Salmon' community play (September 2021) and 'Peat' (March 2022).
The Collati Singers rehearse on Tuesday evenings 7.30–9.30pm in Bittaford Methodist Chapel. If you are interested in joining please see the home page and get in touch for more information.
He started The Collati Singers in 2013 with his wife Gillian (Webster, soprano), initially inviting people from various choirs which Trefor has conducted over the years to join, alongside new singers who responded to recruitment posters, and the choir has expanded mainly by word of mouth since then. They wanted to create a choir for more experienced singers to sing challenging a cappella music mainly from the Renaissance and early Baroque period and by twentieth and twenty-first century composers.
Gillian Webster has worked professionally in music since 1987, teaching piano, leading creative music and vocal workshops, composing music for many community plays, dance-dramas and community musicals, and also mentoring young people with their own compositions for film, drama and concerts. The majority of this self-employed composing and mentoring work has been for Dartmoor-based developmental community company MED Theatre www.medtheatre.co.uk, where she has also been employed three days a week as Company Development Officer since 2009. She has composed for several Arts Council funded projects, a TV advertisement for Kent’s Cavern, for two computer games, a short musical Bovey Tracey Primary School, for Totnes Young People's Theatre and pieces to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day in Exeter and to celebrate a choir exchange between South Brent and Châteauneuf-du-Faou. She composed, sang and played keyboards in the bands Kan-Kan, NowPiscesNow and Double-Edged Pleasure with The Boomtown Rats vocalist and drummer Simon Crowe (with whom she also had two children), in duo Fine Fury with Tony Bayliss, and ceilidh band Five Bar Gait. Prior to this she did a degree and PhD in Physics in Exeter University. She has also delivered 'Singing for the Brain' sessions for the Alzheimers Society and is a member of the Performing Rights Society. Recent self-employed music work for MED Theatre includes composition for 'Rocks' community play (six performances March 2019), music mentor for the 'Dartmoor Rivers' young people's composing project (two performances December 2018), and composer for 'Stapledon' community play with Trefor Farrow (three performances in Ashburton, September 2018. She also composed the music with Trefor, for MED Theatre's Arts Council funded project 'Moor Voices' (September 2020), for alone for 'The Magistrate' radio play (March 2021), 'Salmon' community play (September 2021) and 'Peat' (March 2022).
The Collati Singers rehearse on Tuesday evenings 7.30–9.30pm in Bittaford Methodist Chapel. If you are interested in joining please see the home page and get in touch for more information.