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Stephen Carleston began his musical life as a boy chorister at St. John’s College, Cambridge, at a time when the outstanding choral training abilities of the late Dr. George Guest were beginning to make a national, and later international, impact. Educated at the College Choir School, he won a music scholarship to Clifton College in Bristol, where he studied piano with David Pettit and organ with Gwilym Isaac. Then, after a year as an articled pupil and Acting Assistant Organist to Dr. Arthur Wills at Ely Cathedral, he read music at Oxford University, where he was Organ Scholar of St. Edmund Hall.
Having held church music and teaching appointments in Bedford, Frome and Wolverhampton, Stephen was for several years Organist & Master of the Choristers at St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth, and Director of Music at Bournemouth School. He then moved to the North of England in 1994 as Director of Music at Rossall School in Fleetwood. He left Rossall in August 2000, and now pursues a busy freelance career from his home in Arnside, Cumbria.
He directs the music at Bolton Parish Church, conducts two choral societies, is composition tutor at the Junior Royal Northern College of Music, and teaches singing at a local school. Stephen works for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, examining grade syllabuses (including jazz) and diplomas throughout the UK and abroad, and is also a consultant to the Royal School of Church Music. He is principal conductor of “Laudate”, a choir that exists largely to provide music in major Cathedrals when the resident choir is on holiday. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and also holds the RCO’s Choir Training Diploma.
Stephen undertakes many occasional engagements as conductor (both choral and orchestral), organist, harpsichordist, piano accompanist and adjudicator. He has an especial interest in improvisation, on both the organ (mainly in the French style) and the piano (mostly jazz), and includes an “improvisation on a submitted theme” in each of his organ recital programmes.
Despite his genuine appreciation of Cumbria’s beauty, Stephen can rarely be persuaded to walk, except perhaps to a pub inaccessible by road. He is capable of dozing through even the most riveting of television programmes. What little leisure time he has is ideally spent on his canal narrowboat, Tishomingo.
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