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Biographies
Adjudicators Mark Armstrong [IRELAND]
Mervyn Cousins [ENGLAND]
International Jury
International & National Jury
Mark Armstrong is one of Ireland’s most versatile musicians. A love of choral music commenced at an early age as a boy chorister and developed through his years in Trinity College Dublin where he was invited to direct the College Singers, a sixteen voice chamber choir and Musica Sacra, a choral group specialising in works of the high Baroque. Mark is also an accomplished arranger for choir, wind band and orchestra, an award-winning published composer of choral music and producer of recordings for many of Ireland’s foremost artists.
Mervyn Cousins was a Cathedral Chorister at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. He read for a Music Degree at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and was Organ Scholar there. He was a prize-winner both at University and at Royal College of Organists examinations. After posts in London, at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street and St James’, Sussex Gardens, Mervyn was appointed as Assistant Director of Music at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in 1987. He became Director of Music there in 1993 and was also Chorus Master of the Bury St Edmunds Festival Chorus. Mervyn was Director of Music at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral from 1997 until 2003, and he was also Organist to the University of Liverpool during this time. He has directed choirs and given recitals in many parts of the world as well as adjudicating at festivals in several countries.
Guest conducting engagements have included concert performances and recordings with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Opera Theatre Company, Irish Film Orchestra, RTÉ Chamber Choir, RTE Philharmonic Choir, National Chamber Choir, RTÉ Cór na nÓg and The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin. Mark has been musical director of both Dún Laoghaire Choral Society and Tallaght Choral Society and has conducted collaborative concert performances with the Liverpool Welsh Choral Union (Requiem – G. Verdi) and the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (German Requiem – J. Brahms). He has recently joined the board of the Association of Irish Choirs and has acted as conducting tutor on conducting courses run by AOIC. Mark currently holds the appointment of Director of the Defence Forces School of Music in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with responsibility for the administration, policy, planning, programming and musical direction of Ireland’s military bands. In 2014 he conducted a highly acclaimed performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in an arrangement for choir and wind band at the gala opening concert of the Cork Choral Festival featuring bands of the Defence Forces. Mark is delighted to have been invited back to Cork to conduct this year’s opening gala concert and to act on the international jury.
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He moved to Wales as Music Director of the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod in September 2003, becoming its Executive Director in 2008. Mervyn moved from the festival in 2011, combining work for Mid Wales Opera with ABRSM examining at home and abroad. He also returns to Merseyside regularly to promote singing in primary schools. In November 2015 he was appointed as ABRSM’s Deputy Chief Examiner, working partly from the music exam board’s headquarters in London. His other interests include walking and bird-watching. He is married to Margaret, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Chester University (herself a professional singer). They live on the border of Wales and England with their threelegged cat Missie!