An acclaimed international musician has taken over an amateur choir and is about to conduct them for the first time.

For the past eight years Piers Maxim, 43, has been the chorus master at the Belgian national opera company, La Monnaie.

He has worked with top singers in Europe and America, both in opera houses and in concert halls, throughout his professional life and is also a talented composer who created a work for the millennium eve service performed for the Queen at Southwark Cathedral.

So it is a huge vote of confidence in the35-strong Epsom Chamber Choir (ECC) that he has volunteered to be their conductor.

Mr Maxim said an advertisement for a conductor for the ECC caught his eye. He said: "I am so impressed with their musicality and their reading ability - an aspect of UK amateur music making which I greatly missed on the continent.

I am delighted to be at the helm for my first concert with ECC, doing repertoire that I know and love.

"I've programmed a mixture of new music for the choir, with music that they have done over the years."

ECC chairman, Dick Bacon, said the new collaboration between the "adventurous group of gifted singers" and the talented conductor and composer, is expected to be an exciting one.

He said: "It can take time for a new conductor to establish a rapport and build a working relationship with a choir.

"However for Piers and the chamber choir, things seem to have clicked by the end of the first rehearsal. Enthusiasm abounds on both sides which should be evident in October’s concert."

Mr Maxim musical education began as a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral before he went on to study music at Cambridge University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

His first concert conducting the ECC will be held on October 20 at St Martin’s Church, in Church Street, Epsom, and will contrast the sounds of French composers Ravel, Debussy and Duruflé, and English composers Vaughan Williams and Lennox Berkeley.

The concert will start at 8pm. Tickets cost £12 and will be available on the door or by calling 020 8672 5495.