Esprimo announces year-long residency with conductor Edward Caswell, alongside new ensemble structure

Esprimo Voices performing Handel's Messiah with The Hanover Band and pupils of Lord Wandsworth College, March 2026 at The Church of St Cross.

As Esprimo enters an exciting new stage of its development, we are delighted to announce a new structure for our performing ensembles, alongside a year-long residency with internationally respected conductor Edward Caswell.

Founded in 2019 by Issy Pott, Esprimo is developing beyond its origins as a project-based chamber choir created to provide performance opportunities for young musicians in higher education. We are delighted that so many of those talented musicians continue to sing with us beyond education, alongside successful careers they are establishing across many disciplines, including professional singing.

As our membership has grown and developed, so too has the breadth of experience within it. In recognition of this, our performing activity will now sit across two distinct but closely connected ensembles: Esprimo Voices and Esprimo Consort.

Esprimo Voices will remain our larger, flexible chamber choir, bringing together professional and accomplished amateur singers for ambitious projects and collaborations.

Esprimo Consort is our smaller professional ensemble of approximately eight singers. With an emphasis on unconducted chamber music and collaborative ensemble singing, the Consort draws singers from within the larger choir and creates further professional performance opportunities for early-career singers.

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Alongside our firm commitment to outreach and music education, these ensembles form part of the wider Esprimo organisation, which we look forward to registering as a charity in the coming months. As ever, our focus remains on musical excellence, collaboration, the development of young musicians, and the sense of community that has characterised Esprimo since the beginning.

As part of this next chapter, we are delighted to begin the new season by welcoming Edward Caswell to the Esprimo family for a year-long conducting residency. Edward’s principal focus during the residency will be the musical development of Esprimo Voices, while contributing his experience to the wider organisation where appropriate.

Edward Caswell is a versatile and internationally respected choral conductor, singer, teacher and writer. His extensive work with professional and amateur choirs throughout Europe has included long associations with Collegium Vocale Gent, Chœur de Radio France, Netherlands Radio Choir and MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig. A longtime collaborator with Trevor Pinnock, Edward has prepared choruses for major works including Messiah, Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten, Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, Weihnachts-Oratorium and Messe in h-moll.

In 2017, he published his first book, It’s Always a Pussycat: A Singer’s Approach to Choral Conducting, and in 2024 collaborated with Peter Hunt to produce SingCircle, a collection of 111 rounds and canons for OUP’s VOICEWORKS series.

In 2013, Edward founded Cromarty Youth Opera in the Scottish Highlands with a production of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde. He currently teaches at Godolphin and Latymer School, Whitgift School and Homerton College, Cambridge, and is increasingly in demand as a guest conductor, adjudicator and jury member.

This season includes return visits to Dudok Choir and Orchestra in The Netherlands to conduct Weihnachts-Oratorium and to Paris to prepare Chœur de Radio France for Mahler Symphony No. 3.

Edward Caswell

Issy Pott, Founder and Artistic Director, said:

“I’m thrilled to welcome Edward to the family in the coming year. Esprimo has always grown organically through its membership, and this collaboration represents a rare opportunity to benefit from Edward’s extraordinary breadth of experience while retaining the curiosity, warmth and collaborative spirit that have shaped the ensemble from the beginning.

“It’s also an exciting moment for Esprimo more broadly. As we work towards charity status, we are increasingly thinking of Esprimo not just as a choir, but holistically: as an organisation through which ensembles, education projects and opportunities can grow. I know Edward shares these ambitions, and I look forward very much to seeing where the year ahead takes us.”

Edward Caswell writes:

“The chance to work on a glorious selection of music with this wonderful young choir feels like a very special gift. I can’t wait to see and hear how it unwraps.”

The residency begins with a weekend of workshops from 30 October–1 November 2026, with details of future projects to be announced.