Ben Nicholls
Ben Nicholls (assistant director, deputy stage manager) is a second-year Music student at Selwyn College. Recent credits as producer, director or musical director include Oklahoma!, Side by Side by Sondheim, See What I Wanna See (European première), Twelfth Night (US tour), Les Incas de Pérou, Marat/Sade, and The Jungle Book. RicNic Productions, which he founded in 2003, is currently in its fourth year of residential summer-holiday musical theatre involving young people from across the Southern Counties. Ben also dabbles as an accompanist (recent venues including the Fitzwilliam Museum) and a composer (performances around England and in the USA, and at the BBC Proms). Ben is also a choral exhibitioner at Selwyn College, and was a Music Scholar at Winchester College, where he sang with the Chapel Choir and gained his AMusTCL diploma; he has worked with conductors including Nicholas Cleobury, Stephen Layton, Judith Clurman and William Lacey, has studied piano with Iain Burnside and Robert Bottone, and composition with Michael Finnissy. He is currently President of the University Musical Theatre Society, and also sits on the Amateur Dramatic Club and Baroque Ensemble Committees. Forthcoming projects include producing both Tony Blair - The Musical at the Edinburgh Fringe and Don Giovanni in West Road Concert Hall, and the inaugural concert of his new group, the Charpentier Consort, to specialise in performance of early choral-orchestral works.