Katrine Reimers, 36, is the recently-appointed musical director of the award-winning Swindon-based Wessex Male Choir. She is a graduate of King's College, Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and also trained at the National Opera Studio. Katrine lives in Bath

“BRITAIN is a brilliant place for choirs and has a strong choral tradition,” said Katrine Reimers.

“When I was working with a lot of French and Italian people they were really excited by the English approach to choral singing, which is very much one of going in there and doing it.

“The amateur and professional choral scenes are really world class.

“It’s a great thing as a musician that there’s this tradition.”

For Katrine, the road to Swindon – and many other places – began in infancy with some self-penned Christmas carols and a percussion instrument thought to have been invented in Germany.

Katrine was born in Taunton and is one of three siblings.

Her father was a senior therapist and child protection officer and her mother a teacher of children with special needs who also worked for Barnardos. Both are now retired.

“I liked music right from a very young age. I remember making up my own Christmas carols when I was five or six.

“I couldn’t play an instrument and the only one we had in the house was a glockenspiel.”

Her father, who had played in community bands in his youth, and who is currently learning the saxophone, would help her to tap out the melodies she’d composed.

Katrine said: “My granddad was a church organist, so when we went to my grandparents’ house I would have a go at the piano.

“I remember feeling embarrassed that I couldn’t play as well as my granddad.”

Katrine had clarinet lessons when she was eight and nine years old. She remembers enjoying the instrument, along with the recorder, but thinking it not an especially big deal.

“The big deal,” she said, “was when my Mum got a 50 quid clapped out piano for her 40th birthday. I thought, ‘This is it!’”

For Katrine it was like having an orchestra at her fingertips.

Bishop Fox’s School in Taunton was followed by sixth form college.

“I had a brilliant music teacher at school – Dawn Lankester. She was really inspiring and interesting because she was the kind of musician I am. She played the piano and sang.

“I learned so much from her – to find that in my school was fantastic. It really started me on the road.”

It was through this teacher that, at 16, Katrine joined her first adult choir.

She had always enjoyed singing and still does, although she soon grew to prefer teaching, accompanying and conducting singers.

“My background is that I was always educated to work with singers,” she said.

“I’ve never wanted to be a singer myself and I’ve never trained as a singer but I’ve trained thousands of singers and I’ve accompanied some of the top teachers.”

Her work as an accompanist to choirs stands her in good stead as a conductor.

“I’ve got a sense of what does and does not work. I’m sitting at the piano and seeing what they can follow and what they can’t follow,” she said.”

Katrine wasn’t always sure her career would be in music.

“It was a struggle to decide what to do at university,” she said.

“I could either do a maths and physics degree or music. At the time the thing that swung it was that I was better at music.”

She took a year out after sixth form college to bolster her science credentials with an A-level in chemistry, but when the time came to go to university, music won.

Cambridge was followed by the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama.”

Katrine confesses that she found parts of her degree studies quite dry and dull, and that it wasn’t until her time at the Guildhall, when an instructor mentioned professional musicians, that she realised the truth about her own future.

“It didn’t really dawn on me that I was going to make my living doing music until a few months before I came out of music college, “ she said.

Between music college and her studies at the National Opera Studio – and afterwards – came a wealth of practical experience as an accompanist, an instructor and as in community music projects.

These include helping to set up a community opera project in Leytonstone, and another in South London.

In addition to being Wessex Male Choir’s musical director, Katrine plays piano for Wincanton Choral Society, organises children’s choirs at the French school in Clapham, leads a children’s choir in South Kensington, works with a performing arts group in London and works in various locations as a vocal coach and piano teacher.

She first came to Swindon earlier this year when Wessex Male Choir advertised for a new musical director, and her appointment has now been made permanent.

What attracted her to the Swindon role? “The great thing we do with Wessex Male Choir is that we have a complete range of material,” she said.

The list of pieces the choir has at its command ranges from show tunes to classical works, and from popular music to specially composed newer pieces.

Aside from the sheer beauty of music, Katrine says singing in a choir has other benefits, both physical and mental. They include regulating breathing and developing co-ordination and mental agility, as well as enjoying camaraderie.

“You’ve got to work together. Your interests are mutual. It’s creative, it’s pleasure, it’s a different way to see people – when they’re singing, people are different, “ she said.

“There’s also the regularity of meeting people each week. You get to share that with your family and with your loved ones.”

Any man aged over 18 years who is keen to learn more about Wessex Male Choir can visit wessexmalechoir.co.uk or email membership@wessexmalechoir.co.uk.