Biography

Promoters, please do not use this biography for concert programmes — a current biography will be provided on request

David Allsopp was born in 1982 in a small town in the now-defunct county of Gwent in South Wales. By the age of six he had amassed a large repertoire of nursery rhymes, not to mention some fine Welsh hymn tunes. A career in singing, however, seemed as likely as his ever being quiet for more than a few seconds at a time.

In 1988, David’s father accepted a new post at King’s School Rochester, so the family moved to Kent. Three years later, he was accepted by Barry Ferguson as a probationer in Rochester Cathedral Choir. He remained with the Choir until 1996, his last two years being under the direction of Roger Sayer. Highlights of his treble career included many renditions of the treble solo in Bairstow’s Blessed City, Heavenly Salem and a recording of the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City on a Christmas CD for the Priory label.

David’s speaking voice finally broke shortly before his fifteenth birthday. It has been breaking ever since, as any excited conversation with him will demonstrate. Having attempted to sing in a ‘grown-up’ voice for a couple of months without much success, he realised that his singing voice had not changed much and that his vocal calling was to join the ranks of the altos.

A year or so later, a consultation lesson was arranged with Geoffrey Mitchell, with a view to preparation for the choral trials at Cambridge. The lesson was a success, and David has been studying with Geoffrey ever since. The choral trials followed later that year and David was offered a Choral Scholarship at King’s College, despite an incorrectly-completed application form. He also had the luxury of a pleasingly low academic offer to read Computer Science when he wasn’t to be otherwise engaged in the Chapel.

November 1999 saw David’s countertenor concert debut, performing the central movement of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms in Rochester Cathedral’s annual St. Cecilia Concert. Almost as important, this occasion also marked his introduction to Indian cuisine. The end of David’s time at King’s School Rochester featured a performance of Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater in Rochester Cathedral during the school’s end of year concert (the performance was also repeated during Holy Week the following year).

Prior to starting at King’s, David embarked on a ‘gap’ year, during which he was able to take up an appointment as a Lay Clerk at Rochester Cathedral, having been standing in there regularly over the previous two years. His time was also spent working for BAE Systems as a software engineer and so he combined work on such projects as Eurofighter with such pieces as Walmisley’s Canticles in D minor (sadly, Vaughan Williams’s A vision of aeroplanes was not part of the repertoire!). December of the same year saw David’s London solo debut with a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor in St. Martin-in-the-Fields with the New London Singers. This was followed by a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria again with the New London Singers in July 2001.

David’s first year at Cambridge was conducted on very little sleep, the rigours of the Computer Science Tripos not combining well with a Choral Scholar’s duties. The repercussions of a gloriously obvious mistake in the Magnificat of Tomkins’s Fifth Service during his first Evensong brought home the lesson that King’s was a rather different choir. However, the year had some great highlights, most notably the choir’s performance in St. John’s, Smith Square with the Choirs of Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral of Tallis’s Spem in alium and, of course, the Christmas Television and Radio broadcasts for which King’s is so famous.

Second and third years featured a little more sleep and substantially more work. Taking on the accounting books of the Choral Scholars’ close harmony group Collegium Regale offered new and exciting ways of spending other people’s money through such enterprises as a tour of the United States. During his third year, the choir performed in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, and David was once again able to air Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, this time to a much larger audience and to critical acclaim. The end of the academic year saw a performance of Handel’s Dixit Dominus in King’s College Chapel with the Cambridge University Musical Society.

Having graduated and received first class honours in Computer Science (which he still maintains was slightly more by luck than judgment), a job was required. Fortunately, the number of Choral Scholars graduating that year had created a technical vacancy at King’s and David was able to spend a fourth year in the choir as the College’s first Lay Clerk since 1929. That he had been heard to exclaim in his first year “I shall never be a Lay Clerk” is a fact of which he prefers not to be reminded. The year allowed the perfect Cambridge experience to unfold — choir life without academic work! David busied himself running various parts of the choir’s administrative side and doing a little bit of University teaching. In the course of the year, he started a computer software company with the aim of taking on the world with his software for typesetting Anglican Psalters (which had been used to rewrite the Psalter at King’s).

Fortunately, before orders for this software started to flow in (in fact, before it was marketed!), David was appointed as a Lay Clerk at Westminster Cathedral. His first service was the Requiem for All Souls’, although he is assured that this was entirely coincidental. The daily commute from his home in Cambridge to London gives plenty of opportunity for David to continue with his computing interests and the introduction to the London choral circuit has provided additional singing work. He regularly performs with Tenebrae and has made several solo appearances including a performance of Bach’s „Himmelskönig, sei willkommen“ (Cantata 182) with the Concertante of London, stepping in for James Bowman at short notice.

At present, David continues to live in Cambridge with his ever-understanding wife Emily and just about survives the commute to London. He hopes to increase his profile as a soloist in the coming years.