Charles Cole was a chorister at Westminster Cathedral before winning a major music scholarship to Ampleforth where he studied the organ with Simon Wright. He went on to become Organ Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Music and studied the organ with David Sanger before returning to Westminster Cathedral as the Organ Scholar. He is Director of Music at Our Lady of Victories, Kensington and Duty Organist at Westminster Cathedral.
He is also Director of the Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, a renowned boys’ choir with which he has toured extensively in Europe and the USA and made several recordings and broadcasts. In recent years the choir has performed in Paris, Rome, Cologne, Barcelona, Montserrat, New York and Washington DC. The choir has featured on BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship and BBC TV Songs of Praise. Recent recordings include Sing in Exultation (Christmas music) and Lauda Sion (Music by Mendelssohn, Dupré, Dvořák, Langlais and Gardiner). In 2005 he was appointed Assistant Organist at Brompton Oratory and Director of the Oratory Junior Choir, which, in addition to its liturgical duties, provides the children’s chorus for the Royal Ballet’s productions at Covent Garden.
His own recordings at the organ include Vivaldi’s Beatus vir and Duruflé’s Requiem, the music for an award-winning Volkswagen Polo TV advert, contributions to the Rhinegold Dictionary of Music & Sound and two CDs of contemporary church music by John Streeting and Jonathan Willcocks. He has also played on a number of radio and television broadcasts including a live broadcast of Midnight Mass from Westminster Cathedral (BBC television). He has played at many prestigious venues in London including Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Albert Hall for a Prom with Jeremy Summerly and the Oxford Camerata.
