You cannot look far into the current live music scene in Mid Sussex without coming across the name of Andrew Sutton who recently celebrated twenty years as Musical Director of the Mid Sussex Choir.

Born in East Grinstead and living almost all his life in the locality, Andrew read music at the University of North Wales in Bangor and his main activity - his daytime job - has been as a teacher as Hurstpierpoint College, St Leonards Mayfield and Stoker Brunswick will testify. But the totality of his service to local music has been and is considerable. He has directed and conducted numerous shows. Among the beneficiaries have been Crawley, East Grinstead and Burgess Hill Operatic Societies, the Hands On Theatre Production and the Ariel Company Theatre. He has played with the Ronnie Smith Showband and plays regularly with the Sussex Symphony Orchestra, conducting them in 2006 in the Proms in the Park Concert with Katherine Jenkins in Victoria Park, Haywards Heath, and in their Christmas Concerts in Burgess Hill and Brighton. As an instrumental performer he has delighted many audiences with clarinet and saxophone. Indeed, he and Andrew Franks have played Paul Carr's Double Saxophone Concerto with four local orchestras.

His love of choral music led to ready acceptance in 1987 of the job of Musical Director of the Mid Sussex Choir. He has been our inspiration for twenty-three years in which period he has staged over fifty concerts. Highlights for him have been peformances of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Puccini's Missa di Gloria and Mozart's Requiem. Making music - one might almost say "making music happen" - is his motivation and he has been and is loved and admired by his choristers who pay tribute to his equanimity and patience, his brilliant programme selection and construction, his humour and awareness and, not least, his ability to get the best from singers (who catch his enthusiasm even if they cannot always reach his standards!) It would be difficult to imagine a more popular conductor.