Introducing Us...
Musical Director
With a grandfather who taught as a peripatetic on stringed instruments in Northampton and a father who was a boy chorister that met and married a fellow choir member at university, it was perhaps inevitable that I would become involved in music. After elder siblings began learning violin and flute it was the French Horn that I found in the school cupboard and as there were no other Horn players in the school I was almost immediately drafted into the school's band. That was at the age of 9, over 35 years ago and I have been freelancing around the UK since Graduating from the Royal Northern College of Music for over 20 years. Amongst other things this has seen me appear on Coronation Street (the 2002 Queen’s Golden Jubilee special, when the Street’s residents had a village fete and civil war re-enactment there was a brass quintet playing in the background, blink and you miss it!) and as a soloist in Britten’s Serenade, Mozart’s 4th Concerto and Schumann’s Konzertstuck (on 5 occasions around Northamptonshire and Greater Manchester), as well as travelling to the USA, China, Ireland and many regions of the UK. Alongside the playing, I currently do a small amount of teaching, having been tutor for Wakefield Grammar Schools Foundation, St Francis Xavier in Liverpool and Bury Music service over the last 15 years or so, I currently impart pearls of brass playing wisdom at Bury Grammar School. In 2009 I started to branch out into conducting with a 2 year involvement with the Manchester Universities Gilbert and Sullivan Society (AMD Pirates of Penzance 2010, MD Yeomen of the Guard 2011). This led, in 2011 to becoming the Musical Director for Rochdale Phoenix Opera Society (Iolanthe 2011, La Traviata 2012, HMS Pinafore 2013, La Vie Parisienne 2014, The Gondoliers 2015, Carmen 2016, Patience 2017, Pirates of Penzance 2018, The Mikado 2019), the ladies choir 'More Than Melody' (since 2013) and the Oldham Community Choir (since2017) and assisting with the Greater Manchester Police Male Voice Choir (since 2015) who in November 2018 made the appointment as MD. In my spare time, family favourite haunts of the Talyllyn valley in Snowdonia and the Lake District (where many childhood family visits to grandparents had taken place) are areas I enjoys getting to for fresh air and relaxation. The Peak District and Yorkshire Dales and moors, similar places are also enjoyed and when possible watching cricket and rugby union. I avidly support my ‘local’ rugby team, Northampton Saints alongside, my adopted Sale Sharks and both my county and national cricket teams, having recently attempted to re-don the whites with mixed results!
Jonathan Gibson

Accompanist
Mrs Cath Hilton
My musical education started with piano lessons from 1963 and I was encouraged by the organist at the Congregational church in the village where I lived and where I still attend today. Playing hymns for Sunday School developed into some organ playing and, since the tradition in the church was for the congregation to sing in four part harmony, I was soon singing the alto part alongside my Grandmother.
I attended Canon Slade Grammar School in Bolton where I continued my musical education to A level standard and took up the flute. In 1974 I started a 3 year teacher training course with main subject music at Bretton Hall College of Education in West Yorkshire and began a teaching career in 1977. Most of my career involved teaching music in high schools in addition to being a Head of Year. I retired in 2012.
I have had a lifelong interest in amateur operatics and have acted as accompanist to many different societies and musical groups including Radcliffe Male Voice Choir for whom I am now Musical Director.

Deputy Accompanist
Tatyana Goncharuk
Tatyana Goncharuk is a pianist of rare interpretive insight and collaborative authority. Born in Ukraine — a land whose rivers and steppe-song have nourished generations of poets — she brings to the keyboard a voice at once rooted in Slavic soulfulness and freed by cosmopolitan clarity. Her artistry moves between the shadowed profundities of Dostoevsky and the luminous, esoteric curiosity of Blavatskaya: concentrated, searching, and always unveiled through sound.
A musician of consummate training, Tatyana’s formative studies were undertaken under distinguished pedagogues in Kyiv and later continued at the Royal Northern College of Music under the mentorship of leading artists and professors. In Kyiv she studied with Nadezhda and Boris Arkhimovich at Kyiv Lysenko State Music Boarding Lyceum. Her development was supported by notable scholarships and foundations that recognised her singular promise and rigorous musicianship. From early public debuts to mature concerto appearances, her career has been defined by both solo distinction and an exceptional sensitivity as a collaborative pianist.
Tatyana’s achievements include being a Prize-Winner of the Morray International Piano Competition in Elgin, Scotland, First Prize recipient at the International Piano Competition for Young Pianists in Mariupol, Ukraine, and winner of numerous awards at the Royal Northern College of Music, including the RNCM Concerto Competition, the RNCM Piano Recital Prize, and the RNCM Piano Duo Prize. She has performed in prominent venues across the United Kingdom and internationally. Her repertoire spans a wide stylistic panorama — from the contrapuntal clarity of J. S. Bach and the classical architecture of Beethoven, through the poetic worlds of Chopin and Debussy, to the Russian Romanticism of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, the modernist and neoclassical voice of Prokofiev, the modern intensity of Shostakovich and Bartók, and the living voice of Ukrainian masters such as Lysenko, Lyatoshynsky and Skoryk.
As a collaborative artist, Tatyana has been privileged to work with many of today’s most respected conductors and singers. She has served as principal pianist-repetiteur on major projects, notably collaborating with Carl Davis as principal pianist-repetiteur for the premiere of his powerful, moving dramatic cantata The Last Train to Tomorrow, written for children’s symphonic choir and orchestra — a dramatised retelling of the Kindertransport — profoundly awakens in the hearts of new generations the agonising, tragic memory of the past, as though by an occult stir that rouses a frozen, dark, slumbering gene in the collective human unconscious, calling remembrance from its long, hushed sleep. She has also worked alongside celebrated figures including Sir Mark Elder, James Burton, Matthew Best, Clark Rundell, and Timothy Redmond, and in partnership with distinguished vocalists and stage artists such as Lynne Dawson, Sir John Tomlinson, Roderick Williams, Susan Bullock, Quentin Hayes, Christopher Purves and David Kempster.
Tatyana’s chamber and recital work has been enhanced by masterclasses and studies with eminent pianists — a continued dialogue with the great interpretive traditions represented by artists such as Norma Fisher, John Lill, Nelson Goerner, Steven Osborne, Michel Dalberto and Noriko Ogawa. Her musicianship is defined by an intellectual rigour combined with a visceral communicative power: phrasing that tells a story, tempi that reveal architecture, and colours that speak with almost vocal expressivity.
In addition to her concert engagements, Tatyana holds the position of Pianist within the School of Vocal Studies and Opera at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Whether in solo recital, as concerto soloist, or on stage in service to singers and composers, Tatyana performs with a conviction that music is both an aesthetic pursuit and an ethical encounter with the listener. Her playing invites audiences into a shared intimacy — thoughtful, intense, and unforgettable.


