Jon Williams – Musical Director

Dr. Jon Williams has been Musical Director of Dover Choral Society since September 2019. He studied Music at Durham University where he was also a Choral Scholar in the Choir of Durham Cathedral and Director of Durham University Chamber Choir. He graduated with a Bachelors degree in 1989; a Masters degree in Early Music in 1991, and was awarded a Ph.D. by Canterbury Christ Church University in November 2020 for his research into English Music of the late-17th and early-18th Centuries.

Jon first moved in Kent in 1990, and — apart from three years in London on the staff of The Musical Times and Choir & Organ magazine—he has lived and worked as a musician in the county. He was a Lay Clerk at Rochester Cathedral in the mid-90s, but his main choral work has been as a Lay Clerk at Canterbury Cathedral. He has also appeared as a bass-baritone soloist with choirs and choral societies across the South East, including, on a number of occasions, with Dover Choral Society.

He has participated in many commercial recordings, broadcasts and online with cathedral choirs and other musical groups, and recent projects have included Music for European Courts and Concerts with The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen (issued on the Ramée Label, October 2019), and the Palimpsest project featuring fifteen new compositions by some of the UK’s leading composers with Canterbury Cathedral Choir and Saxophonist Sam Corkin (issued on Signum in 2023). He also collaborates with former Canterbury Cathedral colleagues Dr David Flood and Dr Chris Price (The Good GNUs) in highly acclaimed concerts featuring humorous songs by Flanders and Swann and others.

In recent years, Jon has turned more towards conducting and in addition to his ongoing work with Dover Choral, he was also Musical Director of Cantores; Assistant Musical Director of Folkestone Singing for Health and led a number of other community singing groups including ‘The Friendly Sing’ for the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral.

Jon is also a qualified teacher and has been Director of Music at St Lawrence College in Ramsgate since September 2023 having taught at a number of schools across Kent and Medway including as Director of Music at Simon Langton Girls’ School in Canterbury and Head of Music at Sir Roger Manwood’s School in Sandwich.