Andrew Gant

Andrew Gant is organist, choirmaster and composer at her majesty’s chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.

Andrew Gant was a choral scholar at St John's College, Cambridge under the direction of the late Dr George Guest. He subsequently sang with most of the country's leading ensembles, including The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, The Monteverdi Choir and the Cambridge Singers. He was first tenor and musical director of the Light Blues male-voice sextet, for whom he wrote many arrangements and with whom he toured all over the world.

His degree at Cambridge was in Music and English and included the Arthur Quiller-Couch prize for best creative work for the libretto of his opera Blake. He later studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson, gaining the degree of M.Mus and two of the Academy's composition prizes. His opera The Basement Room was written for the Academy's opera school and performed at the Academy and the Cambridge Festival. In 2002 he was awarded the degree of PhD in composition and contemporary music by Goldsmith's College, University of London, where he studied with Dr Sadie Harrison.

Andrew Gant has worked in church music all his adult life, singing regularly with all the professional church choirs in London including a two-year period as a tenor Lay Vicar at Westminster Abbey, appointed by the Abbey Organist Simon Preston. In the early 1990s he moved from singing in church choirs to directing them, and has held posts as conductor at Selwyn College, Cambridge, The Royal Military Chapel (The Guards Chapel), Wellington Barracks, London, and Worcester College, Oxford. He has given regular concerts with his choirs, and led them on foreign tours and in broadcasts and recordings. In September 2000 he took up his current post as Organist, Choirmaster and Composer at Her Majesty's Chapel Royal.