Jeremy Rouse is Assistant Director of Music at Bedford School, where he runs the academic side of the department. Jeremy conducts the school chapel choir, which sings every Sunday of term in chapel, tours annually and appeared on national television in 2015 as part of the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance.
After reading music at Girton College, Cambridge where he was Organ Scholar, Jeremy worked for several years as a full-time church musician, holding posts at the English Church in Geneva and Wells Cathedral, where he toured, recorded and broadcast with the Cathedral Choir. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.
Jeremy’s diverse musical activities in recent years have ranged from playing the organ for services in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral to composing incidental music to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, accompanying a jazz band on a tour to the Cayman Islands and making a recording on a reconstructed Tudor organ, the soundboard of which had functioned as a barn door for a few centuries.
Peter was a choral scholar in the choir of Kings College, Cambridge. His subsequent teaching career involved running music departments at three schools, Leighton Park, Oundle and Christ’s Hospital, and for ten years he was Head of Lichfield Cathedral School. He has wide experience as a conductor of operas and orchestral works, and has worked extensively with adult, youth and children’s choirs. From 2017-2023 he was Chair of the Cathedral Music Trust.
Recent choral compositions include pieces for performance in India, the Dartington Festival, Winchester Cathedral and Chichester Cathedral. Previously, he has written a number of musicals for the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT), published by Weinbergers, of which Pendragon has had performances in Hong Kong, Japan, London, Edinburgh and New York; it was featured on BBC TV and recorded at Abbey Road on the TER label.
He is now a freelance musician, conducting various choirs and orchestras, running choral workshops and performing as singer, organist and pianist. As a composer, he is currently working on revisions of a musical and of a sacred community opera, The Dream of the Rood, first commissioned by St Albans Abbey in 1993 for their 12th Centenary celebrations.
About us
Ishirini, Swahili for twenty, is a chamber choir which explores and celebrates choral traditions from around the world. Rooted in the Cambridge choral tradition, Ishirini has developed a range of innovative and collaborative projects. In each of our performances we have carefully researched thematic programmes which explore various aspects of place and tradition.
We have been singing for over 10 years, the brain-child of Naomi Rouse and our founding director, Jeremy Rouse. In our tours to Tanzania and India, as well as a reciprocal tour of the UK from Tanzanian national stars Upendo, we conducted workshops with local schools and collaborated with local musicians to perform new compositions exploring the fusion of our respective traditions. In Poland we held joint concerts with our partner choir, Stryzowski Chor, and in Jordan we joined the festival Aswatuna: Arab Sing, where choirs from Jordan, Syria and the UAE performed together in beautiful locations across the country. In August 2013 we performed as part of the Palestinian Choral Festival singing with our partner choirs in Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramalla and in August 2014 we sang concerts as part of the Música en las Montañas festival in la Alpujarra, Andalucia. In 2016 we toured Nepal, linking up with the Music Department of Kathmandu University and singing in temples, schools and hospitals. In 2017 we visited Georgia, where we collaborated with local musicians and in 2018 we visited Florence, singing in churches and museums. In 2019 we visited Addis Ababa, Lalibela and Gonda in Ethiopia, with a sell-out concert with local choirs in City Hall, Addis Ababa, as well as other concerts and workshops in churches, schools and restaurants across the country. We had a hiatus due to the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022 we returned, rather closer to home - we visited Scotland, singing in churches and abbeys in Glasgow, Oban and Iona under our new director, Peter Allwood. In 2023 we visited Portugal, singing in churches in Lisbon and Porto over Easter. And in 2024 we were in Egypt, singing in churches, concert halls and a recording studio in and around Cairo.
Future plans include tours to Turkey, Morocco and Slovenia. We are delighted to receive regular invitations to perform at corporate events, weddings and other projects: if you would like to book us, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Mirror Suite
Alan Charlton
Commissioned for Música en las Montañas, August 2014
Première: July 2014, Capileira, La Alpujarra. London premiere: July 2016 (by Crouch End Festival Chorus)
Mirror Suite is a setting of four poems by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) taken from his 1921 cycle of poems of the same name. Lorca was greatly influenced by nature, particularly the landscape near Granada, where he grew up. In Mirror Suite (1921) Lorca re-imagines natural phenomena, such as rainbows, birdsong, the earth and the sky, through a world of mirrors and reflections. The four movements are scored for unaccompanied choir, which is divided in various ways. Each movement is based on a canon* or mirror canon**: the musical lines are always being reflected in various ways, creating the musical equivalent of mirrors.
Nunc dimittis
Ben Finn
Commissioned for the Palestinian Choral Festival, September 2013
Première: July 2013, Hythe
The Biblical text, beginning ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’, is sung at every Anglican choral evensong and has been set to music by numerous composers. This setting expresses the words’ mixed emotions - praise, hope, and resignation to death - by imitating pealing and tolling bells.
the lily of heaven
Owen Leech
Commissioned for Ishirini's tour to Poland, 2012
Première: August, 2012, Krakow, Poland
the lily of heaven is a double choir setting of an E.E. Cummings poem. The English version and Polish translation are sung simultaneously (by Ishirini and Strzyzowski Chor Kameralny in the first performance) producing a remarkable effect as the very different tone qualities of the two languages alternate in prominence or merge together.
Though I speak
Tim Watts
Première: June 2012, Madingley
Composed by Madingley's Musician-in-Residence for Ishirini's Jubilee concert, Though I speak is a setting of one of the most quoted passages in scripture, 1 Corinthians 13. There is much arresting imagery in St. Paul's letter which is played out in the piece, and the paramount importance of love in the text is reflected at a deep structural level. The variety and vibrancy of the choral writing sustains interest in this substantial a cappella work.
out of the mouths of children
Peter Allwood
Première: February 2011, St. Mary's, Alverstoke
Commissioned specially for Ishirini's tour to India in 2011 and receiving its premiere in Ishirini's perfomance of An Offering of Songs at St. Mary's Alverstoke, out of the mouths of children weaves together the words of Psalm 8 and Grace Before Song, a poem by Ezra Pound (one of Tagore's early supporters in the West) with the melody of Anondoloke, one of Tagore's many famous songs.
Asante 46
Ben Finn
Composed for Upendo's joint concert with Ishirini in Stapleford
Première: July, 2010
An interweaving of a Tanzanian melody with a Tudor part-song, this represents the culmination of our joint musical project with Upendo.
Verbum Bonum et Suave
Brian Inglis
Commissioned for Ishirini's concert in St. Mary's, Netherbury
Première: April 2010
The piece is based on the unique 13th century manuscript found in the bell-tower of St. Mary's. The manuscript includes one of the first known written examples of two-part composition, capturing a critical point in music history when harmonic music started to evolve from single-line chant and plainsong.