Chris has won numerous national awards as a teacher, conductor, horn player, pianist and arranger and was Runner Up in the inaugural Bolton Man of The Year Awards. He has conducted brass bands professionally since 1983 including Brighouse & Rastrick, Grimethorpe (whilst reigning National Champions), Wingates, Black Dyke in concerts performing his own arrangements and James Shepherd Versatile Brass. He has conducted in the Royal Albert Hall ten times and at the Royal Festival Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall and Manchester Bridgewater Hall on over forty occasions.

Chris was a member of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain in the 1970s alongside Ian Bousfield, Nick Childs, Steven Mead and Martin Winter and joined the legendary James Shepherd Versatile Brass as French Horn soloist for five years in 1990, the year he was also appointed to Smithills School having been Head of Brass Instrumental Teaching for Bolton Education Authority since 1983. Chris made his London professional horn debut with The Philharmonia Orchestra at the Barbican in 2003 after two decades of freelancing in the major Manchester and North West orchestras.

Chris has over two hundred brass band and choir arrangements published. These continue to be recorded by Black Dyke, Cory, Foden’s, Brighouse & Rastrick, leading Scandinavian and many other brass bands and choirs on five continents. Chris has also carried out 150 professional adjudications all over the world since 1991 including multiple Swiss, French and English National Championships, Singapore Muse Festival, Scottish Open and multiple Belfast Championships, National Brass Band Finals, Brass In Concert, numerous Area contests and annually on Whit Friday since 2015. Chris is seen interviewed many times during the 2019 BAFTA-winning Sky Arts television documentary about the Saddleworth Whit Friday march contests.

Chris formed his internationally renowned Smithills School Senior Brass Band in 1991 and over the next twenty years together, won over fifty national and international competitions including becoming inaugural World Brass Band Champions in Kerkrade, Holland (Adult 3rd Section, July 2005), winning 16 National Festival of Music For Youth titles including two runs of five consecutive winning years, 7 National Youth Brass Band Champion of Great Britain titles and 6 consecutive BBC Radio 2 Band of The Year titles. Chris’s Senior Concert Band and Senior Big Bands also won multiple National Festival and international titles. Chris conducted his Smithills bands numerous times on national television and radio (multiple BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 programmes and the iconic Blue Peter twice, ‘live’ to over 11 million viewers both occasions) and in many, major London venues. He organised and led 26 major Smithills band concert tours all over the world, from Norway to New Zealand and Japan to America (five sell-out concert tours), twice to Disney Resort Paris and twice for King Charles III, for Queen Elizabeth II, former American President Bill Clinton, many Prime Ministers, numerous film and television actors and leading celebrities. Richard Stilgoe, lyricist of The Phantom Of The Opera, introduced Chris to eight Royal Albert Hall Schools Prom audiences by saying “Every school in Britain should have a Chris Wormald.” Amongst many of Chris’s French Horn pupils whom he taught from beginners here in Bolton, full time professional players include Mark Almond, Principal Horn of Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His former Smithills school percussionist Mark McDonald plays regularly with the London Symphony Orchestra, Halle and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras. Chris is thrilled that The King’s Award For Voluntary Service was bestowed on Eagley Band, Community Band and Community Choir in November 2025.