The English Arts Chorale 2011-12

Artistic Director: Leslie Olive
President: Brian Kay

The English Arts Chorale is an ambitious, enthusiastic choir which aims to enjoy its music-making by achieving the very highest artistic standards. In its 30-year history, under its founder conductor Leslie Olive it has performed with distinguished orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, and the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, appearing at the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Snape Maltings, St Albans Town Hall, Fairfield Hall, and the cathedrals of St Edmundsbury, Manchester, Peterborough, Lichfield, Wells, Guildford, Chichester, Ely, Southwark, and Rochester as well as churches and regional concert halls too numerous to mention. It has toured to Paris, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. It has performed some less familiar repertoire such as Vaughan Williams' A Pilgrim's Progress, as well as routinely performing the Fauré, Mozart, and Verdi Requiems entirely from memory. In 1993 it gave birth to Reigate Summer Music Festival, where it performed all three of Elgar's major repertoire oratorios - The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles, and The Kingdom - within a week.

In 2006 The English Arts Chorale was fortunate to team up with the Prague Conservatoire Orchestra, an outstanding youth orchestra. They came to England for a long weekend and together performed The Dream of Gerontius at Ely and Rochester Cathedrals on consecutive days. The following month the choir travelled to Prague where it performed, again with the Prague Conservatoire Orchestra, in the magnificent setting of the Smetana Hall.

The English Arts Chorale has broadcast on numerous occasions for BBC radio, and has worked with conductors including Klaus Tennstedt, Sir Roger Norrington, and Brian Kay.

Although The English Arts Chorale performs much of the standard oratorio repertoire, it also aims to introduce works by lesser-known composers such as American Morten Lauridsen, whose music is ideally suited to the transparent quality of their ensemble. Language is an extra challenge – The English Arts Chorale has sung in French, German, Hebrew, Latin, Japanese, Russian – and English.

In 2010-11 the Chorale celebrated its 30^th anniversary with a varied programme of concerts, including a performance of Handel’s Messiah in St Mary’s Church, Reigate, 30 years almost to the day after its inaugural performance there. The season culminated in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem from memory to a completely sell-out house in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The future

The Chorale continues its busy schedule in 2011-12 with a performance of Rachmaninov’s Vespers in St Martin-in-the-Fields, as part of the Brandenburg Autumn Festival, its annual performance of the Messiah in St Mary’s, Reigate, and concerts in St John’s College, Cambridge and St Paul’s, Chichester, which will include new repertoire, such as Howells’ Requiem and pieces by Arvo Pärt.

The Chorale is constantly on the look-out for new singers in all sections, and our busy 2011-12 Season is no exception. If you share our passion, come and join us! Our aspiration can be summed up in our Mission Statement: