Speaking in Public - workshops & coaching

07/09/2024

Yearning to sing Mendelssohn's Elijah? Fancy experiencing a day of singing under the baton of our new LHMF Conductor Neil Ferris in his first Festival engagement?

All sorted for you in one easy, one day package!

Come and experience the drama of Mendelssohn’s powerful oratorio Elijah - full of fabulous choruses and beautiful melodies - all under Neil’s expert guidance. Your day of singing will culminate with an informal performance of selections from the piece, with professional soloists.

Date & Timings
Saturday 19th October 2024. Registration from 9:30am, event finishing approximately 5:30pm.

Venue
St Martin’s Church, Dorking RH4 1UT. In the centre of Dorking, approximately 15 mins walk from the main railway station (including a pleasant stroll through Meadowbank & the duckpond!). There is a large public car park adjacent to the church.
(As you may be aware, Dorking Halls is closed through to December for repairs).

Tickets
£25 including music hire. Go to https://lhmf.org.uk/future-events and click on ‘buy a ticket’

Bring a Friend!
How about bringing a singing friend to experience Neil’s first LHMF event?

We’d love to see you there; I’m grabbing my ticket right now before they all go!

29/06/2024

"Who is Sylvia?" That's the question of the day. To find the answer you have two choices. Either read the entire works of Shakespeare(!)* or pop along to Dorking Choral Society picnic** concert this afternoon (Sat 29th June) 4:30pm in St Paul's Church Dorking for a cornucopia of choral settings of Shakespeare texts, along with jazz pieces for a Summer afternoon!

* OK, no need to read the entire works, just Two Gentlemen of Verona act 4, scene 2
** Bring your own picnic!

17/05/2024

...am still chuckling... My warmest thanks to Ade Cove, our amazing videographer from The Professional Speaking Association PSA South East for this birthday AI gift. (If you know me, feel free to join in the chuckles!).
https://www.udio.com/songs/jSV1Q5fbBcGBXmbeW9MXjs?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2_jm5Hy-ZpKo5VqAml6FoNPJ0Nk9czbUF864b8PaFWzYjKL0MSpxBvvOU_aem_AdJdfSKr49PlGhwUPRPDv5c3Ob8uO-RyKZ8IDt720BfwNaE0OYGDwfeMXDMO4efMAiIijouw2nHet6tKg-tVohpS

Listen to Carnegie Serenade by adeee on Udio. Discover, create, and share music with the world. Use the latest technology to create AI music in seconds.

13/04/2024

Voices in rehearsal for this evening’s concert! A few seats still available for tonight – Sat 13th April. Jonathan Willcocks final performance with Leith Hill Music Festival. 240 voices (OK, 237 but who’s counting…), professional soloists, professional orchestra Southern Pro Musica. Oh, the music? Lauridsen – Lux Aeterna & Puccini – Messa di Gloria.
Join us! Only hours left to get your tickets (from £17) via Dorking Halls Box Office, www.dorkinghalls.co.uk or 01306 881717
More information on the festival: www.lhmf.org.uk

11/04/2024

The stage is set… Our Leith Hill Music Festival begins tomorrow, Friday 12th April with over 200 voices filling this space, filling Dorking Halls with glorious harmonies… A few seats still available for Saturday 13th April for Lauridsen – Lux Aeterna & Puccini – Messa di Gloria.
Join us! Tickets from £17: Dorking Halls Box Office, www.dorkinghalls.co.uk or 01306 881717
More information on the festival: www.lhmf.org.uk



Choral Society
Choral Society
Choral Society
Willcocks

01/04/2024

Today's sandwich lunch looking particularly moreish...

10/03/2024

LAST FEW WALK IN TICKETS FOR Leith Hill Music Festival BACH ST MATTHEW PASSION for today Sunday 10th March 24 7:30pm in Dorking Halls. Go to https://lhmf.org.uk click ‘Buy Tickets’ on home page.
Join award winning conductor Jonathan Willcocks, specialist baroque orchestra Canzona, professional soloist James Oxley (Tenor) as the Evangelist with 200 voices from the Leith Hill Festival Choir also Ripieno Chorus choristers from Reigate Grammar School in one of the greatest masterpieces of choral music.
See you there for Jonathan’s final ‘Passion’ performance before handing the baton to Neil Ferris!!

09/03/2024

LAST FEW TICKETS FOR BACH ST MATTHEW PASSION this Sunday 10th March 2024 7:30pm in Dorking Halls. Go to https://lhmf.org.uk click ‘Buy Tickets’ on home page.
Join award winning conductor Jonathan Willcocks, specialist baroque orchestra Canzona , professional soloist James Oxley (Tenor) as the Evangelist with 200 voices from the Leith Hill Music Festival Choir also Ripieno Chorus choristers from Reigate Grammar School in one of the greatest masterpieces of choral music.
See you there for Jonathan’s final ‘Passion’ performance before handing the baton to Neil Ferris!!

14/08/2022

What has been your experience of eulogies?

My Dad’s funeral last week, so something of a busman’s holiday - entirely apposite as one of Dad’s many jobs was bus driver! On his part, proud to have held a PSV licence at the wheel of the old ‘RT’s – no power steering in those days. On my part, a challenging road test of the Speak Performance skills that you and I have likely worked on together.

As much as funerals can be, good day. A gentle celebration of his life, with cycling at its heart; indeed he met Mum through cycling ( Cycling Club). Much of their early years were on two wheels, morphing to three when he attached a tiny sidecar holding a tiny me to his bicycle; motorised transport was a good few years away…

With his later life spent almost immobile in a Home since Mum died two years ago (she was his carer), he simply didn’t want to be here any more. Mind still active yet trapped in a body that no longer functioned, he yearned for Mum, two wheels and the open road. Slipping away peacefully to join her, cycling into the celestial sunset, was what he wanted.

Even writing this is a challenge, as I’m sure many of you have experienced. Many of you will also have heard me exhorting ‘rehearse, rehearse, rehearse’ alongside ‘get the breathing right’, ne’er so relevant as with a eulogy.

You see your carefully crafted, beautifully written line summing up the life of your loved one inexorably rising towards you in three sentences time, along with the lump in your throat. You know what it did to you when you were putting pen to paper; when alone you could let the tears fall again and again.

Now though you are at the lectern. How on earth (or heaven) do you get through delivering to emotionally charged family in the room, with the added pressure – a feature of post pandemic funerals - of delivering virtually to relatives across the globe via we**am, knowing you are being recorded with every family member you’ve ever (or never) met having the ability to forever watch and listen to your every word?

What has been your experience of eulogies?

21/07/2022

Amazing speaker line-up for 2022 on 10th November! Always a privilege to MC this event where our speakers lift the bar year on year; an achievement to be celebrated even before they take to the stage given our rigorous application & live assessment process.

With a theme of ‘Our Future’, we will hear from some exceptional people with great 'ideas worth spreading’. The event will be opened by our very own Rob May, Sponsor (Ramsac and ChristChurch Woking), also a highly successful TEDx speaker (and idea spreader!) from TEDxWoking 2017.

Mark the date – 10th November 2022 at 1:30pm – in your diary now! The audience will be strictly limited to 100 (TEDx rules), so for the first time ever, TEDxWoking will host a live audience as well as being live-streamed exclusively to ticket holders.

Sign up for alerts to hear when tickets go on sale; link here: https://www.tedxwoking.com/node/4

See you there!

24/05/2022

The curse of The Red Button; a cautionary tale.

🅱 Our devices are designed to indoctrinate us into clicking and clacking; and when it comes to The Red Button, our professional world (and the multitude of ‘experts’ in it) inform us that without a constant stream of media, you’re failing at being successful.

📚 In a world where everybody can create media, all businesses are publishing companies. We take the information we think we need to share, and we share it. We publish it.

🎥 Some – not you, of course, but some - spare very little real thought for their audience when they feel obliged to record themselves.

🙅 This taints them with the curse of cognitive bias—blind to the incongruities, the misinformation, the prejudice and the gaping maws of reputation-damaging emptiness in their content.

⏸ So, whilst others are scrabbling around in an obsessive, compulsive dance of spewing themselves into digital form, let us hit pause for a moment.

*CAUTION*

🅱 Only press that red button when you are ready, when you are prepared, when you are thinking like an experienced media publisher.