2020 Season

Joslyn Squire

Joslyn has been a second alto in Auckland Choral since 1983. She enjoys the mental stimulation of working on challenging music and the opportunity to sing larger scale choral works with excellent conductors, soloists and orchestras. The social involvement with like-minded people is an added bonus and many friendships with choir members have been made over the years.
Joslyn’s childhood experiences with music, first learning piano in New Plymouth, then singing in school choirs, and accompanying school productions and assemblies in Auckland, set the scene for a lifetime of musical interests. She studied piano with Elizabeth Milverton –Carter and Hannah Straford, achieving Trinity College of London Licentiate Diplomas in Piano, Theory and Composition and she has been a piano teacher and member of the Institute of Registered Music Teachers since 1976. Joslyn has taught music and conducted or accompanied school choirs for many years, in her work as a Primary and Intermediate School Teacher.
Joslyn’s other interests include extensive travel, writing poetry and novels, reading and book club participation, gardening, walking, pilates, and she is on a U3A committee, also particiipating in history interest groups. Joslyn works as a relieving teacher and as an interviewer for the Citizens’Advice Bureau, a role that is always interesting and rewarding .

Alison Miller

Hi, I’m Alison Miller. I have been singing all my life, as both my parents had good voices, and we followed in their footsteps. I’ve sung in both church and community choirs, but when I was a pupil in the EGGS choir, we sang the third chorus part in St Matthew Passion in the Town Hall with Ray Wilson conducting and I was smitten. Years later when we returned to Auckland, and heard Auckland Choral singing Brubeck’s Light in the Wilderness in 1969, I knew I had to belong to this magnificent choir.. I joined in 1970 as a soprano 1, and have been a member since then, with the first concert being Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, with 6 weeks rehearsal time.
Various committee positions have kept me involved, and I was secretary (in those days - a very basic General Manager) for 7 years, before taking on the Librarian’s position. I was very proud to see our daughter Sandy join Choral while she was still at school, and when I joined the alto line I remember her moral support for me as a new alto. Auckland Choral is my life and the members are my music family, which I am very conscious of every time we perform on stage. Unfortunately I have had to take leave on several occasions because of ill health, but one positive to that is I’ve been in the audience to witness the choir’s great presentations from in front of the stage.

Away from choir and family, I take a team of handbell ringers who meet each week in East Auckland.

Nigel High

Nigel grew up choral singing with the choirs of Kings School and Kings College in Auckland, but then took a break for the next 30 years while focusing on his career as a Consulting Engineer in Ottawa Canada where he moved with his wife in 1981. Later he joined a choir in Ottawa as a way of relieving the stresses of the daily grind, and found that he really enjoyed the challenge, stimulation, and therapy that choral singing provides. He sang with Coro Vivo Ottawa and the Ottawa Festival Chorus for many years, and part time with Auckland Choral since 2006 on his many visits back to New Zealand, before moving back to Auckland with his wife Ming, last year.  He sings as a Tenor 2.

He thoroughly enjoys the music and camaraderie of Auckland Choral, and the high standards demanded by the professional team headed up by Uwe Grod.  While not singing, he spends as much time as possible sailing on the waters of the Hauraki gulf, and since retiring is a keen traveler and cruiser.