Director of Music, Ryan Connolly
Ryan has led youth and adult community choirs, church choirs, and worked as a choral professional for over twenty years. Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota in the United States, he has experience in Catholic, Methodist, Episcopal, and Metropolitan Community Churches. He is committed to enriching the congregational experience through music. Ryan has also sung professionally in the United States and France before relocating to London in 2017.
In 2011, Ryan founded Resound Ensemble in San Francisco, a choir committed to programming a wide range of choral music that represented different aspects of the human experience through song. In 2016, on two different occasions, he conducted the Paris Choral Society and the American Cathedral in Paris, France. Ryan is the founder of Ephemeral Love, a chamber choir that regularly performs throughout London. He is also the composer of the De Beauvoir Psalter, used in our Sunday and Compline services.
Organist, Romee Day
Romee started coming to St Peter’s some 30 years ago and has been playing the organ for 25 years. Romee was a Pastoral Assistant in the parish for many years, and greatly enjoyed organising a weekly Freedom Club for people old enough to have a Freedom Pass.
Soprano Scholar, Cleo Redgrave
Cleo grew up in Hampton Hill in Southwest London. She just graduated with a music degree from the University of Birmingham and is an aspiring professional singer. While there, she loved attending choir, orchestras, and the Gilbert and Sullivan society. She particularly enjoyed singing Carmina Burana with the CBSO and performing in The Pirates of Penzance. Her favourite composer is Hildegard of Bingen because she loves medieval music! In her spare time she loves baking cakes, sewing, and going to the theatre to see musicals.
Alto Scholar, Minna Jeffery
Minna has been singing in choirs from a young age. She spent the last two years as a Graduate Choral Assistant at Keble College, Oxford, and prior to that sang at Christ Church Southgate for several years. She completed a PhD in Drama at the University of Kent in 2023, after which she held a Junior Research Fellowship at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She is currently working on her book, alongside pursuing singing work, translating Finnish literature, and writing plays with her company, Good Friends for a Lifetime.
Tenor Scholar, Sasha Nyamakanga
Sasha is from Coventry, and is now in his first year of studying LLB Law at UCL, hoping to one day become a barrister. He’s been singing since he was very young, beginning in school pantomimes like Cinderella as “Buttons” and as a chorister at Coventry Cathedral. He looks forward to working with the choir over the year and getting to know the community at St Peter’s.
Bass Scholar, Matt Gilchrist
Matt works with local governments as an economic consultant, but has enjoyed singing throughout his life. He studied at UCL and the LSHTM, graduating with an MSc in Public Health. He has always been involved in music-making, ranging across opera, jazz and classical genres, though English choral music has remained his passion. He’s very much looking forward to joining in at St Peter’s, and hopes to help bring some wonderful music to the congregation.