Gareth Malone

Gareth Malone is a choirmaster and broadcaster who first appeared on TV in the three-part BBC documentary series The Choir in 2006. The series saw Gareth take on the challenge of bringing music into the lives of students who had never sung before and ultimately taking them to compete in the World Choir Games in China. To date this astoundingly successful series has won two BAFTA awards and an RTS award.

Following on from the success of series two, The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing, Gareth's third series The Choir: Unsung Town saw him attempt to unite the community of South Oxhey near Watford as a choir. After the warm reception and loyal following The Choir programming received, Gareth’s next project took him to Glyndebourne in a hunt for fresh talent to perform in the new opera, Knight Crew, and on to explore how boys are educated in Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School For Boys and building children’s confidence in The Big Performance.

The fourth series of The Choir airs in November 2011, and sees Gareth form a choir from the wives, girlfriends and children of soldiers serving in Afghanistan. In his most emotional challenge to date, The Choir: Military Wives, follows Gareth as gives a voice to those left behind at the Chivenor barracks. The hit single from the series, 'Wherever You Are', went on general release on the 19th of December and looks set to become 2011's Christmas number one.

Gareth studied singing as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music with Janice Chapman and Jonathan Papp. He is currently filming the fourth series of The Choir and enjoying his second year working with Comic Relief, training up an ensemble of celebrity chefs to form a tuneful choir by Red Nose Day. His first book Music for the People: A Journey through the Pleasures and Pitfalls of Classical Music (Collins) was published on April 2011.