Music Director

Ciara Considine

Ciara Considine grew up in Maidstone, Kent, gaining a County Scholarship on the flute and piano at the Kent Music Academy (formerly Kent Centre of Young Instrumentalists). While a pupil at the Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, she was a member of the Kent Youth Choir, the Kent County Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. 

She went to Manchester to train as a concert-pianist at the Royal Northern College of Music. After getting her Bachelor's degree there, she completed her Postgraduate Diploma and Master's degree.

In 2007 Ciara turned to her Irish roots (her parents were from Counties Clare and Galway) and made albums of Irish folk music, named O Mo Chroi and Beyond the Waves. Both albums continue to have radio-play and sell/stream online via all the major distributors, whilst she performs solos in the ‘trad sessions’ in the West of Ireland whenever time allows.

Ciara began conducting in 2009 and now conducts several youth and adult groups in Kent. 

She transformed the Vigo Singers from 2009 to 2023, earning their reputation for polished performances. And in 2013 she took on the role of Music Director of the long-established classical choir, the East Malling Singers. Through that, she gained invaluable experience in conducting large-scale choral and orchestral works, using London’s best opera soloists and orchestral talent. 

In 2014, she worked with Gareth Malone on the BBC2 series Sing While You Work. She was the off-camera conductor of the P&O Ferries choir who won the series competition under her direction.    

Around that time, Ciara founded the Maidstone Youth Music Society choir (MYMS Voices) in 2014, starting with 5 children and building it to nearly 90 by 2019. In 2020 she became conductor of the auditioning Kent Youth Choir, having worked for more than 20 years with all the Kent Junior Choirs. 

In 2019 she founded the Maidstone Voices, who have become a popular choir thanks to their excellent sound and community spirit. They recently won the ‘Kent Sings’ competition and so performed at the Leeds Castle Classical Concert 2025 to thousands, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Community Gospel Choir. 

With the charity Beating Time, she worked with the Maidstone Prison choir in 2020 and founded a choir for inmates in HM Swaleside Prison in 2022.

In 2023, Ciara became Music Director of the Maidstone Choral Union - the first female conductor in its 121-year history. And in 2023 she founded the Kent Community Orchestra, for adult amateur instrumentalists. 

She founded the school choir at Cranbrook School and is regularly asked to adjudicate at school competitions and festivals around Kent. 

Ciara gives guest workshops and brings groups together for collaborative concerts. Recent collaborations include the Maidstone Wind Symphony, Kings Hill Strings, the Medway and Maidstone Sinfonia, the Kettlebridge Concertinas, the Kent Sinfonia, Energize choir, Innominata, the Boughton Monchelsea Community Choir, the Tunbridge Wells Women’s Institute, the Kent Active Retirement Groups, the Kent Police Male Voice Choir, the Tunbridge Wells Orpheus Male Voice Choir, and with Irish choirs including the Ardfert Singers and the Connemara Choir.