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 and face gestures.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was a British composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.
Raffaele Marcellino is an Australian composer.
Roxanna Panufnik is a British composer of Polish heritage. She is the daughter of the composer and conductor Sir Andrzej Panufnik and his second wife Camilla, née Jessel.
Robin Greville Holloway is an English composer, academic and writer.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist, currently a Professor of Music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century. He is famed among classical musicians and aficionados for his increasingly influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line. Rifkin argued: "So long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus, with few exceptions, simply did not exist." He is best known by the general public, however, for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s, with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
James Whitbourn is a British composer and conductor.
Kerry Andrew is an English composer, performer and author.
Vladimir Ivanovich Martynov is a Russian composer, known for his compositions in the concerto, orchestral music, chamber music, and choral music genres.
Berliner Messe is a mass setting by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Commissioned for the 90th Katholikentag in Berlin in 1990, it was originally scored for SATB soloists and organ. It was first performed at St. Hedwig's Cathedral on 24 May 1990, the Feast of the Ascension, with Paul Hillier conducting the Theatre of Voices. Pärt later (1997) revised the piece for chorus and string orchestra. Pärt uses his tintinnabuli technique throughout, with movements taking many forms within that style—flowing from quietly reverent duets between parts to full chorus proclamations of faith.
Eugene Concert Choir is a choral masterworks organization in Eugene, Oregon, that consists of three performing ensembles: the 100-voice Eugene Concert Choir (ECC), the 36-voice chamber choir Eugene Vocal Arts (EVA), and the associated professional chamber orchestra Eugene Concert Orchestra.
Eurico CarrapatosoComIH is a Portuguese composer.
Benjamin C. S. Boyle is an American composer, pianist, and music theorist.
Igor Kuljerić was an important Croatian composer and conductor. His large opus has followed the stylistic changes and evolutions of 20th and 21st century music.
Cecilia McDowall is a British composer, best known for her choral music.
Clare Maclean is a New Zealand composer. She received her formative musical training under Gillian Bibby at the Wellington Polytechnic. She then moved to Australia, where she studied composition in Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe. Singing with the Sydney University Chamber Choir under the direction of Nicholas Routley introduced her to the intricate Renaissance polyphony that affected her early compositions.
Robert William Witt was a mid-20th-century neoclassical and experimental composer. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, he was a composer, pianist, and professor of music at Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University. Like his mentor, Vincent Persichetti, Witt was well known for exploration of new musical forms and for integrating old themes into new works.
Most of Johann Sebastian Bach's extant church music in Latin —settings of the Mass ordinary and of the Magnificat canticle— dates from his Leipzig period (1723–50). Bach started to assimilate and expand compositions on a Latin text by other composers before his tenure as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, and he continued to do so after he had taken up that post. The text of some of these examples by other composers was a mixture of German and Latin: also Bach contributed a few works employing both languages in the same composition, for example his early Kyrie "Christe, du Lamm Gottes".
Kim André Arnesen is a Norwegian composer. He is mostly known for his choral compositions, both a cappella, accompanied by piano or organ, or large-scale works for chorus and orchestra. His first CD album "Magnificat" was nominated for GRAMMY Awards 2016 in the category Best Surround Sound Album. He has received wide notice with his choral works that has been performed by choirs all over the world. His "Cradle Hymn" was a part of the regional Emmy Prize winning show "Christmas in Norway". Arnesen is an elected member of the Norwegian Society of Composers.
