Staff
Greg Skidmore
Co-Founder and Course Director
Born in Canada, Greg Skidmore arrived in England as an undergraduate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. After graduating with First Class Honours in Music, his post-graduate Choral Scholarship at Wells Cathedral led him to Lay Clerkships at Gloucester Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. He now lives in London and pursues a varied career as a consort, choral, and solo oratorio singer alongside his growing commitments as a conductor and workshop leader.
Greg is one of the UK’s leading consort and choral singers, having appeared with The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, The Cardinall's Musick, I Fagiolini, Tenebrae, The Gabrieli Consort, Alamire, Contrapunctus, The Eric Whitacre Singers, EXAUDI, Collegium Vocale Ghent, Ensemble L’Arpeggiata, Cappella Amsterdam, La Grand Chapelle (Madrid), and the Tafelmusik Baroque Chamber Choir (Toronto), and others. He can be heard on discs released by Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi USA, and others, including Alamire’s recent Gramophone Early Music Award winning disc, ‘The Spy’s Choirbook’ and The Tallis Scholars’ final recording in their Josquin Masses series, ‘Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, Missa D'ung aultre amer & Missa Faysant regretz’, which also won a Gramophone Early Music Award.
In 2015, he featured in I Fagiolini’s Betrayal, a fully staged presentation of the madrigals and sacred music of Carlo Gesualdo, and in 2019 I Fagiolini toured their recent recording project Leonardo: Shaping the invisible extensively in the UK and abroad. During the pandemic, he featured in all of the Voces8 LiveFromLondon festivals, with I Fagiolini and the Voces8 Foundation Choir. More recent highlights have included performances with actress Tamsin Grieg as part of I Fagiolini’s Re-Wilding the Waste Land project and singing in his hundredth concert with The Tallis Scholars.
Solo engagements have included working with ballet dancer Carlos Acosta in his A Classical Farewell at the Royal Albert Hall; Handel’s Messiah with the Irish Baroque Orchestra; Purcell’s Ode for St Cecilia's Day with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment; Purcell's Fairy Queen with the Gabrieli Consort at the Spitalfields Festival; and Monterverdi’s 1610 Vespers at the Brighton Early Music Festival, and with I Fagiolini and the BBC Singers at the Barbican Centre’s Milton Court Concert Hall. Ex Cathedra's CD release of Alec Roth’s oratorio A Time to Dance features Greg in a role written for him.
Greg has given workshops and masterclasses in the UK, France, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in association with The Sixteen, I Fagiolini, and on his own. In 2015, he led The Corsham Winter School, and has worked with Eamonn Dougan, Associate Conductor of The Sixteen, and Justin Doyle, Chief Conductor of RIAS Kammerchor, as Assistant Director of the Ludlow Summer School. He regularly leads smaller workshops at the request of choirs and other groups of singers based around the UK. He is Musical Director of Brighton Consort, and founded the London-based consort The Lacock Scholars, a group of previous choral scholars at some of the UK's best universities keen to continue high quality vocal chamber music.
He is increasingly engaged in Canada as a guest conductor, clinician, and record producer. In 2018, he founded The Canadian Renaissance Music Summer Schools and his work with the organisation now includes three courses each year in Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia. Through CRMSS courses he has brought together world-leading practitioners with singers and instrumentalists of all ages across Canada, including working with Guest Artists Peter Phillips of The Tallis Scholars and Robert Hollingworth of I Fagiolini, and collaborating with regular CRMSS staff members who hail from the UK, Canada, and beyond.
He has been published in Early Music and his writing has appeared in programmes and CD liner notes for The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, The Cardinall’s Musick, The Gabrieli Consort, Tenebrae, and Ex Cathedra.
Hugh Lydon
Co-Founder and Associate Course Director
Hugh Lydon is a teacher, singer and conductor who is passionate about choral music. This love was developed as a chorister in Westminster Cathedral from 1992-1997. Hugh studied Music Education at Trinity College Dublin, before moving to Perth in 2010. In 2017, Hugh founded the Perth Choral Institute; an organisation that delivers choral education to singers of all genres. PCI operated residential courses from 2017-2019 and multiple Boot Camps throughout each year, where singers could experience styles from Gospel to Opera Choruses.
In 2019, Hugh began employment at Aquinas College, directing the inaugural Schola Cantorum. The choristers receive rigorous choral training and perform throughout Perth. They have sung alongside many WA ensembles, including WASO, Perth Symphony Orchestra and Australian Baroque. Hugh continues his own involvement in choral music, both as a singer and as conductor. He has performed in all major WA choral ensembles, and has conducted The Giovanni Consort, WA Opera Chorus and St George’s Cathedral Consort. He is currently the Chorus Master for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.
Matt Long
WARMSS 2027 Staff Member
Matthew Long was a successful treble soloist, singing the role of Miles in Britten's Turn of the Screw for Italian Opera houses. He studied music at the University of York and sang as a choral scholar in the choir of York Minster during his time there. He later won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London. Whilst there he was a Susan Chilcott Scholar and a Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist. At various times, he has been a member of the celebrated chamber choirs, The Sixteen and Tenebrae and continues to sing as a part of the solo voice ensemble, I Fagiolini.
Matthew has appeared as a soloist with many UK based ensembles, including The OAE, The English Concert, The Hanover Band, The Dunedin Consort, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the LPO. Highlights have included Bach, St. Matthew Passion for the Boston Handel and Haydn Society; Britten, War Requiem for Jonathan Willcocks in Salisbury Cathedral. In 2017 he performed the title role in Monteverdi's Orfeo to critical acclaim in a series of semi-staged productions in Norway and the UK with I Fagiolini. Further performances are planned in York and London in 2019. In December 2017, Matthew sang the Evangelist for three concerts of Bach's, Christmas Oratorio with the Danish Radio Choir in Copenhagen. He is increasingly known as a Monteverdi specialist, regularly performing the 1610 Vespers, most notably for the national youth choirs of Great Britain at the Albert Hall, London and at the Osaka Jo hall, Japan with the Berlin RIAS Kammerchor. He appears as tenor soloist on the Dunedin Consort's 2017 recording of the same piece.
Matthew's debut solo disc with the LPO and accompanist Malcolm Martineau, Till the Stars Fall, was released in 2015. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, gems from the English song repertoire sit alongside folk songs in celebration of some of Britain's finest music. He performed this programme in May 2018 as part of the 'Music in the Cotswolds' festival for Martin Randall Travel.
In his spare time, Matthew is a keen photographer and follower of wildlife conservation.
Amy Moore
WARMSS 2027 Staff Member
Soprano Amy Moore moved to Australia from the UK in 2015. With a voice praised for its “crystalline clarity”, Amy is an adept soloist and ensemble singer, and a particular affinity for both Early and Contemporary Music. During her distinguished career in the UK, she performed with many of the leading ensembles, including The Tallis Scholars, Tenebrae, The BBC Singers, and The English Concert. As a member of EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, Amy premiered numerous new works and collaborated with some of the world’s foremost contemporary orchestras. Her solo career highlights include radio broadcasts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, performances with The Gabrieli Consort, and concert appearances with the Bochumer Symphoniker, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Hanover Band, and London Contemporary Orchestra.
In Australia, Amy has performed solo concerts with Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Bach Akademie Australia, and Ensemble Apex, with whom she recently gave the Australian premiere of Kitty Xiao’s In flesh ii for soprano, chamber ensemble and electronics.
Amy serves as Co-Artistic Director and Second Soprano of The Song Company, which transitioned to an artist-led model in 2023. A dynamic and versatile musician, she frequently directs concerts from within the ensemble and is increasingly sought after as both an ensemble and vocal coach. Amy takes great pride in mentoring and coaching emerging talent through The Song Company’s Artist Development Program. She is also the co-founder of CASTALIA Vocal Consort and the conductor of Phoenix Choir, based in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.
Andrew O'Connor
WARMSS 2027 Staff Member
As a performer and educator Perth-born Andrew O’Connor appears regularly in both a solo and ensemble context with many of Australia's finest music organisations. Andrew is a Lay Clerk with St Mary’s Cathedral Choir, Sydney, and from 2015 to 2019 was a core member of The Song Company. In 2021 became a founding member of AVÉ – the Australian Vocal Ensemble. In 2022 he made his international debut with The VOCES8 Foundation and in 2023 was a member of the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco.
In 2025 Andrew appears at the Sydney Festival with Bach Akademie Australia, sings Purcell's The Fairy Queen and Handel's Messiah with Pinchgut Opera, Bach's St Matthew Passion with Sydney Philharmonia Choirs at the Sydney Opera House, Faure's Requiem as part of the 50th Anniversary of the Sydney Chamber Choir, and in multiple touring projects for both AVÉ - Australian Vocal Ensemble and The Song Company. With St Mary's Cathedral Sydney, he will tour Rome, Vienna, and Munich.
In an educational capacity he currently teaches at Sydney Grammar School and regularly working with organisations including Gondwana National Choirs, Moorambilla Voices, Sydney Children’s Choir, St Mary’s Cathedral Choir, Perth Choral Institute and more. He previously held teaching positions at St Aloysius College, Christ Church Grammar School and John Septimus Roe Anglican Community School. Outside of music, Andrew is always on the hunt for an excellent coffee, a great bowl of pasta, a new favourite red wine, tickets to the latest theatrical hit in Sydney, or a long coastal walking track.
Matt Jones
WARMSS 2027 Staff Member
Matt Jones received his MMus in Lute performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the UK in 2002. He was based in London (1999-2003) and Berlin (2003-2019), working with orchestras such as Akademie für Alte Musk Berlin (DE), The King's Consort (UK), Freiburger Barockorchester (DE), Capella Vitalis Berlin (DE), festivals e.g. Schleswig Holstein (DE), Batignano Opera (IT), Corfu University Opera (GR), Kulturkapellen (DE), singers e.g. Anna Prohaska, Valer Sabadus, Francesca Lombardi-Mazzuli, in chamber music e.g. with Nadia Zwiener (violin), Magnus Andersson (lutes), Mira Lange (cembalo), solo recitals, and varied crossover projects in new music, popular and ethnic musics, and contemporary and historical dance.
Since moving back to Perth in 2020, he is currently researching for a Ph.D. at WAAPA, teaching Lute / Theorbo privately, and at UWA, has performed in ancient music with HIP Company, Australian Baroque, music for dance with Chrissie Parrott, Talitha Maslin, and new music with Lindsay Vickery. His current showcase project in Early Music is performing with Krista Low (Viola da Gamba) with Theorbo as Michel & Magno. His research into late Renaissance music is foregrounded in his PhD through techniques and aesthetics in Lute and Theorbo style and ornamentation until c. 1630.