Seb Farrall

Musical Director

Since graduation in 2014, Seb has worked as a musical director, conductor, arranger and vocal coach, working with choirs of all sizes, and Orchestral ensembles. Seb also makes many recordings in his home studio producing choir 'guide tracks'. Lockdown in 2020 has also seen Seb develop new digital skills spending an increasing amount of time producing ‘virtual choirs’ as well as developing a mobile app to support remote community singing. Seb is also a keen performer, his main instrument percussion, which has led to performing in prestigious concert halls (Including O2 Arena London, and the Royal Albert Hall) and around the world. Seb has also recently joined the a tap dancing class!

Seb Farrall graduated from Coventry University in 2014 with a first-class degree in Music Composition, and the Robert Ramskill composition award for ‘significant contribution to the department’. Seb's composition tutor was leading experimental composer Chris Hobbs. While studying at Coventry, Seb conducted the department’s orchestra as student conductor for several years with tuition from Chris Evans and was involved in many successful composition and conducting projects.

The biggest contribution to Seb's degree success was final collaborative project, MenCho, where Seb and co-founder Jon Welling formed together the MenCho Men's Chorus at the start of 2014. Starting a community ensemble as part of a degree project was a big risk, while most lecturers though it was an excellent idea, others were keen to point out that it was potentially foolish with both degrees on the line. Jon and Seb both agreed that it was a risk worth taking and, fortunately, it paid off.

Shortly after MenCho reached it's end, Seb was contacted by the Workplace Choir Company, and asked to help with the London Taxi Company's Black Cab Choir.  Since 2014, Seb’s excellent reputation as a conductor has continued to grow, and he is delighted now to be Musical Director of a number of ensembles in Warwickshire, including Sing it Loud, Coventry Philharmonic Singers, Burton Green Village Choir, Earlsdon Park Village Singers, The Coventry City Salvation Army Songster Brigade, and the Bad Vibrations Singing Group. The proving ground was MenCho, and the phone didn't stop ringing.

Seb also runs www.onlineconductor.com, a website aimed at resourcing choirs, removing bars which may stop people from enjoying music.

During the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020 Seb became somewhat adept at creating virtual choirs and video production went through the roof. The first was (Something Inside) So Strong (Sing it Loud), and many...many(!) virtual choir performances later culminated in two 'virtual concerts'. Sing it Loud and the Kenilworth Lions. Another concert was squeezed out in Spring 2021 deemed to be the last.......(fingers crossed!)

To help with creating virtual choirs, Seb also developed an app - onlineconductor.app. While Seb was always keen on technology, he didn't ever imagine that this passion and natural skill would tie in so well with music making. 

Seb's approach very much hinges on extracting musicality from ink on a page and transforming it into something with colour and life. Playing/singing the right notes is the easy bit, and is frankly possible without a conductor. It’s also important when in the community setting that rehearsals are enjoyable; Seb works hard to ensure people always leave rehearsals in a positive frame of mind, eager to return the following week and perhaps even practice once or twice. This comes, in part, from a healthy injection of humour, well-structured rehearsals and solid musical achievements. The angry conductor routine doesn’t work; people make much better music  from a place of encouragement and comfort. If the music is good, everyone is happy and vice versa – there are no losers! That doesn’t mean mistakes aren't corrected or standards are lowered, but feedback comes from a positive encouraging (maybe humorous!) stance, and not a harsh or critical one. This works well long-term, because as musicianship is developed, the ensemble as a whole becomes stronger.