About Richard

I was born in Hull in 1961. We moved to Sheffield in 1966 where I was educated at Silverdale Comprehensive School. I was a chorister, head-chorister and songman at Sheffield Cathedral. I started private singing lessons at the age of 17, gaining Grade VIII and progressed to Trinity College, London at the age of 21.  At Trinity, I studied singing with the late Eric Vietheer and Anna Berenska as well as piano with Valda Aveling.

I am currently (senior) Layclerk with Ely Cathedral Choir. I have sung in many of the great cathedrals and churches of England, Europe, Canada and the USA. I was a co-founder of the close harmony group ’shades of blue’. I have made numerous appearances on Radio and Television. I currently hold the full-time position of Technical Manager with Ely Cathedral dealing with electrical/mechanical items, the Cathedral sound and light systems, the computer network and I maintain Ely Cathedral's website.

I suppose you would say that I am fluent in the web language HTML and CSS and I also dable in php and pearl coding. I maintain Lantern Productions website as well as a few other sites, namely David Clover Festival of Singing, Greenwich Baroque, Radio Addenbrooke's and St. Mary's, Ely.
In my spare time away from Cathedral life I am heavily involved (Technical Director) with Lantern Productions, which is a location recording company established in 1988 with a former assistant organist of Ely Cathedral, Sean Farrell.

I also find time to pursue one of my other hobbies, radio broadcasting; presenting a weekly Sunday night radio request programme for the Hosptial Radio station - Radio Addenbrookes in Cambridge. Over the years I have had close links with Radio Hallam, BBC Radio Sheffield, CNFM (now Q103) and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.