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David has appeared as both a choral conductor and pianist in major London venues including the Queen Elizabeth Hall and St John's, Smith Square; as well as abroad.
His first term as a student at the Royal College of Music, was Sir David Willcocks' last as Director, and so as a member of the choir he experienced Sir David's weekly choral training.
In 1999 Meacock re-orchestrated Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius to allow choirs of just 80 singers to perform it in the provinces. His reduced orchestration of the Verdi Requiem was premièred just four months later in March 2000 - see details elsewhere on this site.
This led to the then Concerts From Scratch organiser inviting David to prepare choristers for Sir David's Royal Albert Hall concerts, as well as to do three Christmas Singdays! and, in 2004, the first Easter Singday! Although only 10% of the singers had performed Bach's St. John Passion, David steered a couple of hundred singers towards a very good performance, which many a choral Society would have been proud of after a full term's rehearsals, on merely four hours on-the-day choral rehearsal.
David's bid of over £4,000 for charity to conduct the Hallelujah chorus at a Royal Albert Hall Messiah from Scratch event was trumped, and so he has now formed his own bring and sing organisation, the A40 Super Choir, which has three aims: first, to bring singers together in large numbers to enjoy singing both favourites as well as lesser known choral repertoire; second, to grow large enough to perform in the Royal Albert Hall; and third, to raise ten times the failed £4,000+ bid (over £40,000) for charity.
The first A40 Super Choir event was in April 2006, in St Giles' Cripplegate, Barbican, London. Following a two-hour workshop, David conducted the Brahms' Requiem using Brahms' own rarely heard version for two pianos. He also filled out the programme by being the soloist in Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Eb. Although we were only together for the two hour workshop our performance of Brahms' A German Requiem, was greatly appreciated by the audience.
The second event, INSTANT MESSIAH 2006 raised the bar for bring and sing Messiahs. Only the soloists and orchestra rehearsed in the afternoon. The 'instant' aspect of it was that the choir went straight in, unrehearsed and sang the whole work completely UNCUT. Unlike other scratch performances of Messiah we didn't chicken out of the lesser known or more difficult movements. INSTANT MESSIAH with the A40 Super Choir is now the ultimate bring and sing challenge and so great fun. If you'd like to pick up that gauntlet, then watch this space for our next performance!
See above for future events.