Oxford’s premier mixed voice choir

PERFORMING VERDI’S REQUIEM TO CELEBRATE ITS 150TH ANNIVERSARY

Tickets are now on sale for the final concert in our 2023/24 Season, Verdi’s dramatic Requiem, marking the 150th anniversary of its first performance, in May 1874.

This magnificent setting of the Requiem, by one of opera’s greatest of composers, is a perennial favourite of performers and audience alike.  For this anniversary performance we are joined by four outstanding soloists and the City of London Sinfonia.  Benjamin Nicholas conducts.

See below for concert and booking details.

********

JOHN RUTTER SINGING DAY

SATURDAY 11TH MAY 2024, 11am-5pm (registration from 10am)

OLIVIER HALL, ST EDWARD’S SCHOOL, WOODSTOCK ROAD, OXFORD OX2 7NN

TICKETS £25 (F/T STUDENTS £15) from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/john-rutter-singing-day-with-oxford-bach-choir-tickets-819292715567

Tickets are now available for a day of singing with one of the country’s leading composers.  We will work on a range of music from John Rutter’s wide range of compositions. Music will be provided.  See below for more details.

********

LOOKING AHEAD TO OUR 2024-25 SEASON

Handel’s Messiah opens our 2024-25 Season, with a performance in the Sheldonian Theatre (where Georg Fredrick himself performed in 1733) on Saturday 7 December 2024.

We are also very excited to announce that 2025 sees the start of the Oxford Bach Choir’s Elgar Project, with our first ever performance of Edward Elgar’s great oratorio The Apostles, on Sunday 16 March 2025.

As a schoolboy, Elgar was encouraged by his teacher to imagine the Apostles as very ordinary men, who were transformed by their encounter with Jesus, and this thought stuck with him for the rest of his life. In 1902 Elgar planned a great trilogy of oratorios on the lives of the Apostles, but only completed two of them, The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906). The OBC will perform these two great works in successive seasons, something which is rarely done anywhere.

********

ARE YOU LOOKING TO JOIN A CHOIR IN OXFORD?

We are one of the best-known large choirs in the country, with a history which goes back 127 years, and have performed with some of the greatest composers, conductors, orchestras and soloists.

If you are looking to join a choir with a welcoming atmosphere, high standards and a passion for performing great music, we would like to hear from you!  Currently we have a waiting list to join us, but each summer a proportion of the choir move on, creating space for new members in all voice parts to join.

For more information, follow “Join the Choir” at the bottom of this page, or click here https://www.oxfordbachchoir.org/join-the-choir/.

********

WATCH OUR ONLINE CONCERT IN THE TIME OF COVID

Our concert of French choral music from the Sheldonian Theatre in September 2021, the first in our 125th Anniversary Season, can be seen free at www.positivenote.co.uk/oxford-bach-choir. Oxford Bach Choir was conducted by Benjamin Nicholas, and Robert Quinney was the organist.  Rebecca McNaught (cello), Lila Chrisp (mezzo) and Ben Davies (bass) were soloists in Duruflé mid-20th century, Requiem.  The concert began with Fauré, Cantique de Jean Racine, and includes the immediate-past Oxford Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald, reading a sonnet by John Donne and reflecting on the impact of the pandemic.  This was a fundraising concert for Oxford hospitals.