The English tenor, Clifford Armstrong (real name: Clifford Mould), studied at Eastbourne College in Eastbourne, East Sussex (Class of 1960). He received his musical education in the King's College Choir Cambridge and at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he studied singing, organ, conducting and musicology (LRAM GRSM: 1966).
Clifford Mould has had a varied career as a professional singer, university teacher, food and wine writer and critic. He has sung in many fine professional choirs, including the Cathedrals of Ely, Guildford and Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. He was a regular member of the world famous Monteverdi Choir (Director: John Eliot Gardiner) from 1966 until 1991. He sang under the name Clifford Armstrong, and he appeared as tenor soloist with the Praetorius Consort of London in the 1970's and 1980's, and also with many choral societies. He specialised mainly in the performance of early and Baroque music, accompanied by original instruments.
It was while Clifford Mould was touring abroad that he developed a keen interest in wine and food. He has been a judge at the International Wine Challenge for eleven years running - from 1999 he has been invited to chair one of the tasting panels. He has also been a regular judge at the English Wine Festival. He holds the Cordon Bleu Diploma in cookery. He founded Wine and Dine Ezine with Tony le Ray Cook in 1995, but he left after a year to start his own Internet magazine Dine Online in 1996. He runs the Kingston & Surbiton Wine Circle, now in its eleventh year, and he gives tutored tastings for other clubs and groups.
Clifford Mould was a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich until 1997. He now holds adjunct professorships at Drexel University in Philadelphia and Syracuse University, New York, for whom he teaches respectively, programs (based in London) in Culinary Arts and Wine, and a course about the London classical music scene.
Clifford Mould has a married son living in Seattle and another bachelor son who crews on luxury yachts based in Antibes. Clifford and his wife live in Surrey where she keeps an Irish horse - a snow white grey called Chance, and he trains a Black lab gundog called Jake |