BRITISH composer Antony Pitts will  take over from Roland Peelman as director of Sydney’s Song Company after 25 years at the helm, it has been announced today.

The Belgium-born Peelman has been increasingly in demand as a conductor on the international concert circuit and, as director of the Canberra International Music Festival, he has commitments close to home, too.

Pitts’s exceptional career as a composer, conductor, producer, and teacher has combined academic, industry, and professional musical experience at world-class levels. He has been a chorister in the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, Academic and honorary senior scholar at New College, Oxford, founder and director of the Cannes classical ensemble Tonus Peregrinus, senior lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, senior producer at BBC Radio 3, and patron of the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, he is also recipient of the Radio Academy BT Award and the Prix Italia.

His oratorio, “Jerusalem-Yerushalayim” has been performed to standing ovations in the UK and the US. Scores of his music, including “The Naxos Book of Carols”, are published by 1equalmusic and Faber Music, and recordings released on Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Signum, and Unknown Public, from milestones of early Western music to his a cappella version of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”.

Pitts says: “Halfway across the globe seems a small step compared to the privilege of leading and re-inventing The Song Company into its fourth decade and connecting with new audiences via the timeless eloquence and fathomless beauty of the human voice.”

Song Company chair, Penny Le Couteur, says Pitts was the outstanding candidate after a robust international search and that the company is “incredibly happy to welcome him and his family to Australia”.

Pitts will be in Australia in September for the launch of his 2016 program for The Song Company, and will formally take up the post of artistic director in January.