Nigel Perrin, countertenor with the King’s Singers who went on to be an inspiring choral conductor – obituary

Nigel Perrin, who has died aged 76, was an agile countertenor with a beautiful clean line and an infectious personality who did much to define the character, sound and style of the King’s Singers in their early years; as a choral conductor he later enthused choirs across the country with his expressive features, scrupulous attention to detail and passionate enthusiasm for the music, telling The Bath Magazine in 2021: “I consider myself a sculptor, creating and shaping sounds.”

The King’s Singers, a versatile, close-harmony sextet of male voices, emerged from King’s College, Cambridge, in the late 1960s performing repertoire ranging from liturgical motets of the Renaissance to arrangements in the popular idiom. They started by giving concerts at their former schools for the price of a pint, later branching out into performances at Winchester and Salisbury in aid of cathedral appeals.

David Willcocks, director of music at King’s College, did not rate their chances. “It’s one thing to sing two or three pieces of music, but to earn your living you have to do much better than that,” he told them, though as the Singers achieved success he was happy to tell the story against himself.

When they appeared at a Queen Elizabeth Hall concert with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Neville Marriner they received glowing reviews and soon had a full diary. In 1971 they took part in a Prom of contemporary music conducted by Pierre Boulez at the Roundhouse in north London. The following year they undertook a 35-concert tour of Australia and New Zealand with Perrin firmly established on the top line.

After the group’s concert in Nebraska in 1973 a critic from the Omaha World-Herald wrote: “The high, countertenor voices of Nigel Perrin and Alastair Hume wafted through the hall light as a flute, blending evenly in tone and colour with the lower voices of their associates.”

As the decade progressed Perrin increasingly appeared on television with the King’s Singers accompanying the likes of Dudley Moore, Vera Lynn and Harry Secombe. He recalled on one occasion filming a Flanders and Swan number in the bath. “The BBC put six bubble baths on stage and we spent about four hours in them while filming. They kept topping them up with hot water and we came out looking like bleached prunes,” he told Great British Life.

Before long the King’s Singers had upwards of 1,500 numbers in their repertoire, including a jingle for the Keep Britain Tidy television commercial. Meanwhile, jokes about six men sharing their travel and accommodation were met with a genial response, though they remembered fondly a celebrated radio slip by the early music historian David Munrow in which he introduced them as “an all-male grope”.

During a dozen years with the King’s Singers, Perrin appeared on 25 albums, including the Victorian Collection (1980), a vigorous array of part songs that were once the mainstays of the convivially alcoholic Glee Clubs – “the sort that cathedral choristers might have sung after choir practice in the snug bar of the Red Lion,” he told Gramophone magazine.

Nigel Perrin was born into a forces family on November 4 1947 and took his first piano lessons aged seven while living in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. He joined the local church choir, telling his mother after one early practice that they had been singing “something about magnifying a cat”.

She made him stand in the cold front room of their home to practise Panis Angelicus for his audition for the choir of Ely Cathedral, though as a pupil at The King’s School, Ely, he spent much of his time playing cricket, trumpet and trombone. He recalled being “trained in the basics of choral singing in the life-sculpting ambience of a mediaeval cathedral”, where his “bones and soul became infused with the pure glory of Renaissance polyphony”.

Unlike most boys, Perrin’s singing voice never broke. By the time he left Ely to take up a choral scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge, he was being given countertenor parts to sing. Again, he enjoyed sport, especially rugby, as much as making music or attending to his studies in history, English and theology. Willcocks had no objection, only stipulating that he take a shower before turning up to rehearsals.

With the choir of King’s College he took part on three occasions in the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. He was also involved in their celebrated recording of Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor with John Shirley-Quirk, conducted by Willcocks.

Abandoning a teaching diploma, Perrin moved to Windsor Castle and sang in the choir of St George’s Chapel part-time while devoting the rest of his time to the group that eventually became the King’s Singers. Before long it had become a full-time occupation.

He left in 1980 after a “spiritual experience” and was appointed music adviser to the Church Army, working to boost congregational music in parishes around the country. He also undertook solo singing engagements, and can be heard as a backing singer on Cliff Richard’s Christmas single Little Town (1982).

Thereafter Perrin made his life in the West Country, adjudicating at music festivals and teaching music at Marlborough for 10 years, before another 25 years at Wells Cathedral School. In 1986 he founded his own chamber choir, Bath Camerata, and in 1990 became musical director of the 85-strong Bath Bach Choir, a post he held for 33 years and from which he spun out the City of Bath Bach Junior Choir for children over the age of eight. Encouraged by Willcocks, he added Exeter Festival Chorus to his portfolio in 1999.

When the Three Tenors performed in front of the Royal Crescent, Bath, in 2003, he brought together a backing choir for the occasion, while in 2015 he formed a smaller choir to record the National Anthem for the Queen’s Christmas broadcast to the nation. At one time he was conducting no fewer than seven choirs, explaining that choral singing is good for health.

“It is a communal activity and can be invigorating and thrilling,” he said. “It is also a very physical activity, and after rehearsing for two hours you feel you have done a really good work-out, and a pint of beer goes down very well.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic he continued to make music, initially with somewhat chaotic choir rehearsals on Zoom, then outdoors, and eventually in small and socially distanced groups. “We were so determined to navigate our way back to live singing,” he said.

Perrin enjoyed plying the Kennet & Avon canal in his narrowboat Tulip. He also kept bees in the grounds of his Wiltshire home, producing 20kg a year of honey. He is survived by his wife, Kate, and by four children from his two previous marriages.

Nigel Perrin, born November 4 1947, died June 23 2024