Brentwood Arts Council Online

Bruce Pennick

By the time I was ten my mother had noticed that I seemed to sing a lot around the house and asked if I would like to join a church choir. It happened that the local organist was the best for miles around and she gave me the love of choral music which has been my preoccupation ever since. She also brought her daughter along to church and I eventually married her.

My connection with choral music in Brentwood began around 1956 when a teaching colleague and Brentwood Old Boy introduced me to Dr Brice, whom I had previously come across only through membership of a competing choir at Festivals of the Essex Musical Association. They always seemed to win. I sang regularly with BCS until I took charge of an evening Music School in Basildon on their rehearsal evening, but Dr. Brice was good enough to invite me back for concerts, continuing a connection which eventually led to my succeeding him as conductor for two years.

After a year or two teaching at Ingatestone School in the early '60s I formed an SATB Youth Centre Choir from ex-members of the school choir and on several occasions they gave combined concerts with Ingatestone Choral Society, as a result of which I was later asked to conduct them. Apart from a two-year mid-life sabbatical we have been together ever since.

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