History of the BBC Singers: 2000 onwards |
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 The BBC Singers
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"Splendid", "magnificently sung", "superbly sung", "wonderful" - these are recent critical plaudits for the BBC Singers: Britain's only full-time professional chamber choir is an ensemble internationally-recognised as belonging to the first rank, and its breadth of repertoire and range of activities are unsurpassed anywhere else in the world.
Established - not long after the BBC itself - in 1924, the BBC Singers have grown from a choral octet, broadcasting the daily act of worship on the Home Service, into a virtuoso, twenty-four-voice ensemble which, these days, is a major presence on the choral scene. The Singers' breadth of repertoire and versatility are second-to-none in the professional choral sphere, and it is this flexibility which enables them to be both an important resource in the broadcast music-making of the BBC as well as a significant part of British concert life.
At home on the concert platform as much as the recording studio, the BBC Singers perform a wider range of music than any other choir, and the group's particular expertise with contemporary scores has led to creative relationships with some of the most important composers and conductors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This season they have collaborated with the BBC's own orchestras, with a variety of instrumentalists (period instrument ensembles such as His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and The King's Consort, chamber orchestras such as the City of London Sinfonia, and contemporary music groups like Endymion, Ensemble Intercontemporain and the London Sinfonietta), with internationally-renowned conductors (such as Peter Phillips, Robert King, Harry Christophers, Richard Hickox and Pierre Boulez, as well as Chief Conductor Stephen Cleobury, and Principal Guest Bob Chilcott) and composers (including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Judith Bingham, Brian Ferneyhough and the BBC Singers' own Associate Composer, Edward Cowie).
With a public profile that takes in concerts and broadcasts across the whole of the United Kingdom (Belfast, Norwich, Newcastle and Edinburgh, as well as London and the Home Counties, in recent and coming months), a repertoire that embraces music ancient, modern, and all points in between (this season alone the BBC Singers perform everything from medieval carols to a newly-commissioned score by Harrison Birtwistle, have sung to 500 schoolchildren at The Ocean, Hackney's cutting-edge music venue, and taken the roles of the chorus and thirty soloists in a concert performance of Britten's Death in Venice), a rapidly expanding education programme without equal on the British choral scene (the group's outreach work now includes regular collaborations, across the country, with school children, youth choirs and the adult amateur choral community, as well as with tomorrow's young professionals - composers, singers and conductors), the BBC Singers enter their eightieth season as a unique presence in the musical life of the UK: a world-class choral ensemble committed to sharing their enthusiasm and creative expertise with audiences and performers, amateurs and professionals, young and old, throughout the nation and across the whole spectrum of the choral community.
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From some of the earliest sacred music for unaccompanied voices to the choral repertoire of the present day. |
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