City of Bath Bach Choir
| City of Bath Bach Choir | |
|---|---|
| Choir | |
| Origin | Bath, Somerset, England |
| Founded | October 1946 |
| Members | about 100 |
| Music director | Nigel Perrin |
| Website | www |
Bath Bach Choir, formerly The City of Bath Bach Choir (CBBC), is based in Bath, Somerset, England, and is a registered charity. Founded in 1946 by Cuthbert Bates, who also became a founding father of the Bath Bach Festival in 1950, the choir’s original aim was to promote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach via periodic music festivals. Bates – an amateur musician with a great love and understanding of this composer’s works – was also the CBBC’s principal conductor and continued in this role until his sudden death, in April 1980. This untimely exit pre-empted his planned retirement concert performance of J. S Bach's Mass in B minor, scheduled for July of the same year, and effectively ended the first period of the choir's history.
Distinguished Handelian scholar Denys Darlow succeeded Cuthbert Bates as musical director in 1980 and remained in the post until 1990. He was followed by Nigel Perrin, who has been conducting the CBBC ever since. Perrin began his musical life as a chorister at Ely Cathedral, then won a choral scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, studying under Sir David Willcocks. In 1970 he also joined the newly-formed King's Singers, having sung with them on an occasional basis after graduation in the Summer of 1969, thereafter entertaining the world throughout the 1970s as the highest voice (counter-tenor) of the irrepressible and ground-breaking vocal group.
The first president of the CBBC was Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams OM until 1958. Sir Arthur Bliss CH KCVO KT, then Master of the Queen's Music (Musik), took over as president in 1959, followed in 1975 by Sir David Willcocks CBE MC, until 2015. In 2016 David Hill (choral director), musical director of The Bach Choir was elected president of Bath Bach Choir, and Jonathan Willcocks a vice president.
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