Iford Reservoir

Until his retirement in 2010, Nicolas Chisholm was Headmaster for twenty-two years of the Yehudi Menuhin School, a Specialist Music School which educates 70 gifted young musicians from all over the world. It was his experience as a professional musician as Tenor Lay Clerk in Chichester Cathedral Choir and as an academic that took him to the Yehudi Menuhin School. Before then he was Head of Classics and a housemaster at Hurstpierpoint College.

Nicolas Chisholm began his musical training while at Christ’s Hospital School from where he won a choral scholarship to

St John’s College, Cambridge. He studied with Wilfred Brown, Sir Peter Pears, Ryland Davies and Jane Manning.

He attended the Britten-Pears School in Snape in 1980 and 1981, specialising in Oratorio and English Song.

Nicolas Chisholm continued to maintain a professional singing career whilst running the Yehudi Menuhin School. He has sung with many of the choral societies in the South of England, and recently given a number of solo recitals.

He was a founder member of New Sussex Opera singing several roles, and before that was with Opera 70 singing

the eponymous hero in Britten’s Albert Herring and Captain McHeath in the Beggar’s Opera. He also directed

Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

He was President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians

in 2016, Chairman of Trustees of the Brighton Philharmonic Society until 2019, and is a council member of Brighton Early Music Festival. As a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company

of Musicians, he has been involved in taking the young professional musicians who are Yeomen Prize winners of the Company into primary schools for interactive music workshops in London.

He is a governor of St Paul’s Girls’ School and chairman of the Education Committee. Until recently was a Governor of the Royal Ballet School and Chairman of the National Association of Music and Dance Schools. He ran the Stoke d’Abernon Festival in 1996 and 2006, and in that same

year completed a Concert Hall at the Yehudi Menuhin

School in memory of its founder, Yehudi Menuhin.

He was awarded the MBE in 2011 for services to

Music Education.

Apart from his passion for music, he is interested in

print-making, archaeology, photography and classic cars.