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English Chamber Choir | |
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 English Chamber Choir logo | |
| Background information | |
| Years active | 1972–present |
| Members | Conductor Guy Protheroe |
| Website | www.englishchamberchoir.com |
The English Chamber Choir is a choir based in England.
The English Chamber Choir came into existence in 1972; its earliest engagements included Haydn's Nelson Mass, Fauré's Requiem and Kodály's Laudes Organi with Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra, and live performances at the old Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, of the rock opera Tommy with London Symphony Orchestra and guest soloists. These were followed by Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.
Over the years the choir has performed in all the major concert halls in London (South Bank, Barbican, St John's Smith Square, Cadogan Hall), in St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and many other churches known for their musical traditions. It has sung abroad in Brussels, Antwerp, Basel, Zurich, Athens and Plovdiv (Bulgaria), and has visited many cities, towns and villages throughout the UK. It has appeared at the Chelsea Festival, the Byzantine Festival in London and as part of the Encounters exhibition at the Barber Institute in Birmingham. In May 2012 it made its debut at the Brighton Festival - England's biggest arts festival. It has sung by invitation for the Lord Mayor of London at the Mansion House and HM The Queen at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
In 2012 it re-recorded Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth at Abbey Road Studios.
The choir sings regularly with the Belmont Ensemble at St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London's Trafalgar Square, performing popular classics including Mozart's Requiem, Fauré's Requiem, Vivaldi's Gloria and Handel's Messiah. It has also commissioned many new works, most recently the Troparion of Kassiani from the Greek-Canadian composer Christos Hatzis and Sub tuum praesidium by Ivan Moody.
The choir's repertoire spans at least five centuries. Although not a specialist 'early music' choir, it performs many a cappella works from the 16th and 17th centuries. It has in repertoire all the major choral/orchestral works of the baroque and classical era: Bach's Passions and the B Minor Mass, Handel's Dixit Dominus, Solomon and many other oratorios, the Masses of Mozart and Haydn together with Mozart's Requiem and Haydn's The Creation. On occasion it has expanded its forces to perform Brahms' Requiem and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius.
Its a cappella repertoire includes a wide spectrum from Tallis to Tavener. Britten and Poulenc feature prominently, together with Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Arnold Bax and many other Romantic composers.
For many years the choir featured on albums by Vangelis, and is probably best known for being featured on his soundtrack to the Ridley Scott film 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Other credits include the Era albums created by the French composer Eric Lévi. The choir's relationship with Rick Wakeman, begun in 1974, continues to this day. In 2009 it appeared live with Wakeman at Hampton Court in a revival of his first solo album The Six Wives of Henry VIII as part of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Henry's accession to the throne and a few weeks later at Cadogan Hall in his 'unplugged' piano, choir and orchestra programme: P'n'O
The choir has a special association with contemporary music written for the Orthodox Church and/or inspired by Eastern traditions. It has sung and recorded many works by John Tavener, Ivan Moody and Christos Hatzis, among others. It has also collaborated on several occasions with the William Tyndale Society in programmes exploring not only the words of Tyndale himself, but the use of vernacular texts in sacred music across Europe.
In October 2012 the choir celebrated its 40th anniversary with a concert in St John's Smith Square. This included works by Bach, Bax, Tallis (the 40-part motet Spem in alium), Christos Hatzis and Ivan Moody. Paddy O'Connell and Rick Wakeman were guests.
Film credits include 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Band of Brothers.
The choir has appeared on Gordon Ramsey's Christmas Cookalong (when his guest was Gok Wan), on Chris Moyles' Quiz Night singing hymn-tunes to Stephen Fry, and from 2008 to 2011 has written and sung satirical versions of popular Christmas Carols on Radio 4's Broadcasting House on the Sunday morning before Christmas.
A selection of recordings including the choir includes:
Featured on the track "Supertzar" on Black Sabbath's Sabotage album.
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A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures.
Sir John Kenneth Tavener was an English composer, known for his extensive output of choral religious works. Among his best known works are The Lamb (1982), The Protecting Veil (1988), and Song for Athene (1993).
Kassia, Cassia or Kassiani was a Byzantine-Greek composer, hymnographer and poet. She holds a unique place in Byzantine music as the only known woman whose music appears in the Byzantine liturgy. Approximately fifty of her hymns are extant, most of which are stichera, though at least 26 have uncertain attribution. The authenticity issues are due to many hymns being anonymous, and others ascribed to different authors in different manuscripts. She was an abbess of a convent in the west of Constantinople.
Ivan Moody is a composer born in London, England, on the 11th of June 1964. He studied composition with at London University, York University and privately with John Tavener. He also studied Eastern Orthodox theology at the University of Joensuu in Finland. Moody is active as a conductor, having directed ensembles such as Voces Angelicae, the Kastalsky Chamber Choir, Capilla Peña Florida (Spain), Cappella Romana, the Choir of the Cathedral of St George, Novi Sad, (Serbia) the KotorArt Festival Choir (Montenegro), the Orthodox Choir of the University of Joensuu (Finland) and Ensemble Alpha (Portugal); and as a widely published musicologist. His research interests include the music of Eastern Europe, especially 20th century and contemporary music from Russia and the Balkans, the music of the Orthodox Church in the modern era, music and spirituality, music as theology, Serbian church music, the aesthetics of Modernism and Postmodernism and their intersection with Orthodox church music and the musical culture of the Mediterranean.
Era is a new-age music project by French composer Eric Lévi. Some of the lyrics were written by Guy Protheroe in an imaginary language similar to Latin, but deliberately devoid of any exact meaning. Musically, the project blends Gregorian chants with modern elements and genres, especially rock, pop and electronic music.
The Tallis Scholars is a British professional early music vocal ensemble normally consisting of two singers per part, with a core group of ten singers. They specialise in performing a cappella sacred vocal music.
Ann Murray, is an Irish mezzo-soprano.
Cappella Romana is a vocal ensemble founded in 1991 in Portland, Oregon. Its name, meaning "Roman Chapel", refers to the medieval Greek concept of the Roman oikoumene, which embraced Rome and Western Europe, as well as the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople and its Slavic commonwealth centered at Moscow. It has become especially known for its exploration of Eastern Orthodox vocal music. It has collaborated with notable museum exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The ensemble's 2002 performance of Ivan Moody's Passion and Resurrection was acclaimed by Los Angeles Times music critic Chris Pasles as "sung gorgeously" and "like jeweled light flooding the space".
The Paschal troparion or Christos anesti is the characteristic troparion for the celebration of Pascha (Easter) in the Byzantine Rite.
Jeremy Summerly is a British conductor. He was educated at Lichfield Cathedral School, Winchester College, and New College, Oxford. While at Oxford he conducted the New College Chamber Orchestra and the Oxford Chamber Choir. After graduating with a first-class honours degree in music in 1982, he started work as a studio manager for BBC Radio, while pursuing postgraduate research in historical musicology at King's College London. Since 1991 he has been a presenter and reviewer for BBC's Radios 3 and 4, in particular for Radio 4's Front Row, and Radio 3's Record Review.
Melinda O'Neal is a conductor of choral and choral-orchestral music, professor emerita of music, and author.
"Song for Athene" is a musical composition by British composer John Tavener with lyrics by Mother Thekla, an Orthodox nun, which is intended to be sung a cappella by a four-part choir. It is Tavener's best known work, having been performed by the Westminster Abbey Choir conducted by Martin Neary at the funeral service of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 6 September 1997 as her cortège departed from Westminster Abbey.
Saint Peter's Singers (SPS) is a chamber choir associated with Leeds Minster, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England that celebrated during the Season 2017/2018 the fortieth anniversary of the choir's formation by Harry Fearnley in 1977. An anniversary concert took place at Leeds Minster on Sunday 25 June 2017 with the National Festival Orchestra and soloists Kristina James, Joanna Gamble, Paul Dutton and Quentin Brown. Further anniversary year events included Bach Cantatas and Music for Christmas at Fulneck Church in August and December respectively, Handel Coronation Anthems at Holy Trinity, Boar Lane as part of the Leeds Handel Festival in September and a tour of East Anglia in October. In November at Leeds Town Hall, the Singers participated in Herbert Howells's masterpiece Hymnus Paradisi with Leeds Philharmonic Chorus and Leeds College of Music Chorale under the direction of Dr David Hill with the Orchestra of Opera North. 2018 began with a concert of Sacred Choral Masterworks at Leeds Town Hall in February and Bach's Mass in B minor at Leeds Minster on Good Friday 2018 in memory of long-serving member Jan Holdstock. The final concert of the current season takes place at Leeds Minster on Sunday 24 June at Leeds Minster at 5.30. At this event will be presented the first performance of a new work from composer Philip Moore commissioned for the Singers' 40th anniversary – the motet Tu es Petrus – along with music by E W Naylor, Arvo Part, Sir Hubert Parry, Judith Bingham and Maurice Durufle.
Peter Phillips is a British choral conductor and musicologist. He was the founder of The Tallis Scholars in 1973 and of Gimell Records in 1980.
Christos Hatzis is a Juno Award-winning Greek-Canadian composer. Many of his compositions are performed internationally, and he is a professor at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.
Guy Protheroe is a British conductor, musical director, composer, arranger, lyricist, singer, writer and musicologist/forensic musicologist. He has been conductor and musical director of the contemporary music ensemble Spectrum and the English Chamber Choir throughout his career and has also worked extensively in commercial music with many leading artists, in particular Rick Wakeman, Vangelis and Eric Lévi. Apart from conducting he is also known as a singer in both classical and commercial music, has founded and directed a number of festivals and similar projects, spent a few years writing and editing for the BBC, and is a forensic musicologist in the UK.
Joël Suhubiette is a contemporary French choral conductor. In particular, he conducts the chamber choir Les Éléments which he founded in Toulouse and with which he received a Victoire de la musique classique in 2006 and the Ensemble Jacques Moderne in Tours.
Sunhae Im is a South Korean soprano. She has been described as a bright and versatile lyric soprano with lightness and coloratura. She first gained her reputation in the field of early music and now performs a wide range of classical and non-classical music.
The Choir of Somerville College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, is mixed voice and is led by a Director of Chapel Music, currently William Dawes, incumbent since 2017. In conjunction with the organ scholars, the choir is central to the musical life of the college and, in its present form, was founded by Francis Knights and Sam Bayliss in 2001. Previous Directors of Chapel Music include David Crown, who directed the choir between 2007 and 2015. The choir sings in Somerville College Chapel every Sunday during term and performs regularly in concerts organised by Somerville Music Society. The organ of the college chapel is a traditionally voiced instrument by Harrison & Harrison. Somerville offers up to five Choral Exhibitions each year to applicants reading any subject.
