The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford is among the finest and most active university choirs in the UK.

Its wide-ranging repertory includes a rich array of music from Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces to contemporary works, including commissions. During the academic year the Choir provides the music for regular services in the splendid Baroque Chapel of The Queen’s College and its extensive concert schedule involves appearances in many parts of the UK and abroad, including work with various professional orchestras such as the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Brook Street Band, the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and Instruments of Time and Truth. The Choir broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio, while tours in recent years have included China, the USA, Sri Lanka, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, the Low Countries, and Germany. Summer 2019 sees the Choir’s first visit to South America.

The Choir's latest CD recording was released in February 2019, and features the Missa Gloria tibi trinitas and other works by the sixteenth-century composer John Taverner. It met with universal acclaim as critics praised the grandeur of the full ensemble and the wonderful wall of sound. Equally glowing reviews met The House of the Mind in 2018, a disc celebrating the music of Herbert Howells, setting his works alongside pieces he inspired and influenced, including works by Nico Muhly and David Bednall. Reviewers commented on both the excellent performance and the intriguing choice of repertoire. Queen's Choir has also recorded for film at the famous Abbey Road Studios, and appears on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack of the Warner-Brothers film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which was released in July 2009.

Simon Desbruslais is a British trumpet soloist, whose performances have been critically acclaimed as ‘steel- lipped’, ‘musically compelling’ and possessing ‘supreme confidence and flair’. Equally active in baroque and contemporary music, Simon has recorded extensively for Signum Classics including most recently Psalm: Contemporary British Trumpet Concertos, an album of trumpet works written for him by John McCabe, Robert Saxton and Deborah Pritchard. Radio and Television broadcasts form an integral output to Simon’s work and over the last four years he has performed live on BBC 1 Television, BBC Radio 3 & 4 and German Radio SWR2 to millions of viewers and listeners worldwide.

A crucial element of Simon’s career involves working with composers to create and champion new works involving the trumpet. This has ranged from chamber works, such as trumpet and piano, to full-scale concertos and more unusual combinations such as trumpet with choir, or with string quartet. Simon has a particular commitment to British music – composers who have written with his sound and technique in mind include, among others, Edwin Roxburgh, John McCabe, John Traill, Deborah Pritchard, Lola Perrin, Luke Bedford, Toby Young, Tomas Yardley and Tom Armstrong. More recently, he has begun to collaborate with composers from further afield, including a new concerto for trumpet, piano and strings by American composer Geoffrey Gordon as a partner to Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto.

Since his breakthrough season in 2012/13, Simon has given concerto performances in China and Brazil, appeared as soloist with Royal Northern Sinfonia, English Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, Charivari Agréable, Brook Street Band, Ensemble Diderot and London Concertante, and as a guest chamber musician with the Ligeti Quartet, Austral Harmony, Little Venice Ensemble and Ensemble Perpetuo. He gave solo performances at the Ryedale, Wymondham, Bangor New Music, North York Moors, Deal, and Rheine Vokal festivals, and appeared as a concerto soloist on the natural trumpet at the Wigmore Hall. Simon is fortunate to maintain active duo partnerships with pianist Clare Hammond and organist Stephen Farr, among many other fine musicians.

Simon was educated at King’s College London and the Royal College of Music, winning numerous prizes and scholarships. He was then a private student of Eric Aubier in the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Rueil-Malmaison. Keen to expand on the relationship between performance and musicology, Simon holds a doctorate from Christ Church, Oxford, on the music theory of Paul Hindemith, which will soon be published in monograph form. He is Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, where he is also Director of Performance, and he has lectured at the universities of Bristol, Nottingham, King’s College London and Surrey. His research into historical trumpets led to a recording on artefacts held by the Oxford Bate Collection, which included the first recordings of music on the nineteenth-century, long ‘Bach’ trumpet, among other historical curiosities.

Simon acknowledges the generous support of Arts Council England, Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Britten Pears Foundation and Help Musicians UK.

Owen Rees is both performer and scholar, his scholarship consistently informing his performances. Through his extensive work as a choral director, he has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works from Spain and Portugal. His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic and persuasive voices’ in this field. He has conducted at festivals worldwide, and is increasingly busy as a leader of workshops on performance of Renaissance polyphony. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and on Portuguese, Spanish, and Norwegian radio. He has released CD recordings on the Hyperion, Signum, and Avie labels to consistently high critical acclaim and his work has been shortlisted for the Gramophone Early Music Award.
Owen Rees began his academic and conducting career as Organ Scholar at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, studying with Peter le Huray and Iain Fenlon. After a period as College Lecturer in Music at St Peter’s College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he joined the Music Department at the University of Surrey, where he was promoted to the post of Reader. In 1997 he returned to Oxford, where—in addition to his posts of Fellow in Music at The Queen’s College and Director of Music of the Choir of The Queen's College—he is Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College and a Professor in the Faculty of Music. His numerous published studies include work on the Spanish composers Cristóbal de Morales and Francisco Guerrero and the English composer William Byrd.