Cole Bendall (BMus, MMus)

Teaching Fellow and Course Organiser in Music, Centre for Open Learning

Contact details

Availability

  • I am available to answer e-mails remotely. Please note that it may take up to 72hrs for a reply due to my external freelance commitments.

Background

A dynamic musician and an imaginative creative leader, Cole Bendall is a conductor, educator, and vocal coach based in London and Edinburgh. He has received critical acclaim for his philosophy of coaching which aims to empower musicians with the technical skills required to perform well and a deep passion for the stories behind the music.

Cole's current conducting roles are Music Director of Brockham Choral, Woking Choral Society & Holmbury St Mary Choral Society; and Director of Music at St Peter's Church, Limpsfield. He is on the Music Staff of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain and the Rodolfus Foundation. Previous roles include Haslemere Musical Society, the Athenaeum Singers of Warminster, the University of St Andrews, and Surrey County Youth Choir. In 2016, he founded the Reid Consort as an elite chamber choir of Scotland’s pre-professional choral singers.

Major collaborations and highlights include performances with the Academy of Ancient Music, Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Covent Garden Sinfonia, Amadeus Orchestra, Southern Pro Musica, British Sinfonietta; alongside masterclasses with Rundfunkchor Berlin, Hallé Choir, and Turkish State Choir. In 2022, he appeared as a Symphonic Conducting Fellow at Miami Beach Classical Music Festival, FL, USA. He maintains a deep interest in interdisciplinary performance including work on virtual choirs and semi-staged productions of choral works, such as the Reid Consort’s critically acclaimed performances of Arvo Pärt’s PASSIO and Cole’s own devised PATCHWORK REQUIEM. He has also assisted on semi-staged projects with Byre Opera and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus. ​Recent major projects include Verdi Requiem, Haydn The Seasons, Roth A Time to Dance, Smyth Mass in D and Bach St Matthew Passion.

With a strong passion for music education, Cole is highly in demand as an animateur, workshop leader, and tutor for youth groups, university students, and adults. His enthusiasm for educating new generations of musicians and teachers is seen in his work for Ark Music, the Rodolfus Foundation, London Youth Choirs, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Tri-Borough Music Hub, Kingston Music Service, and Surrey Arts where he has directed the Surrey Primary Schools Music Festival concert series for thousands of children annually. He has developed training and educational resources for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Surrey Arts, and numerous external partners in musicianship, vocal health, music history, and conducting. He has been awarded prizes and scholarships for his work by the Association of British Choral Directors, the Association of Teachers of Singing, and Help Musicians UK.

Cole is a Visiting Teaching Fellow in Music at the Centre for Open Learning at the University of Edinburgh. A prize-winning graduate of the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh, he writes and teaches regularly on choral music and identity, cultural politics, the rise of virtual choirs and digital media in choral music, and the development of video game music. He has written for The Choral Journal and Oxford University Press, as well as on his Substack, You Set the Tone.

Qualifications

BMus (Hons) Music, First Class. University of Aberdeen.

MMus Musicology, University of Edinburgh.

Undergraduate teaching

I am not teaching for the Centre for Open Learning in the 2024-25 academic year. I have previously taught the following courses for COL and the Reid School of Music:

  • Great Choral Masterpieces
  • Musical Analysis
  • Music and Ideas from the Renaissance to Viennese Classicism
  • Practical Musicianship I & II (a Kodály based approach to developing practical music skills)

Additionally, I have developed the following new courses for COL:

  • Composing for Choirs
  • The Evolution of Video Game Music

Research summary

My research explores the intersection of choral singing, community identity, multimedia, and political theory. This research is deeply influenced by my practice as a conductor and vocal coach. Previous major projects have included nationalism in the Soviet-era choral music of the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis; the rise of the "virtual choir"; the choir as a symbol of identity in the music of Sam Smith and Madonna; choirs as seen on screen and on YouTube.