About Us

About the Shrewsbury Consort of Recorders

The Shrewsbury Consort is a Recorder Orchestra, founded in 1969 as an adult education evening class, under the direction of a Musical Director.

We meet twice a month for the pleasure of playing a variety of multi-part recorder music covering all ages, but mainly from the 16th century up to the 21st century. The seven different sizes of instruments played within the Consort range from a Sopranino, down to the Contra bass.

From time to time we perform concerts to raise money for a variety of charities both local and national in the UK. One of our last concerts was on the 11th February 2023 with Os Rocks choir from Oswestry at Mereside Community Hall where we raised £260 for the Turkey and Syria earthquake fund.

Our Musical Directors: Past and Present

The Shrewsbury Consort of Recorders was started by Fred Averis in 1969 as an evening class at College Hill. The group was then taken over by Richard Duncan in the early seventies until he left to work in London.

Over the next years, we had a number of conductors until Richard White took us on in the early nineties. He then stayed with us for over 23 years. During his time he arranged and composed most of the music that we played, we did many concerts raising many thousands of pounds for charity, and we did an exchange visit with a choir from Zutphen, Holland.

Richard White also started Recorders Galore in 2007 and was its first conductor. He retired from ill health in 2017 and Richard Duncan become our Musical Director again. Since then we have almost doubled in size, performed several concerts and survived the coronavirus pandemic.