English Chamber Choir

English Chamber Choir
English Chamber Choir logo
Background information
Years active	1972–present
Website	www.englishchamberchoir.com
Members	Conductor Guy Protheroe

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 The Who. 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.