Guildford Chamber Choir

A very warm welcome to Guildford Chamber Choir’s website.

We are a small project choir performing a varied programme of three concerts a year, while raising money for local charities.

Having recently said goodbye to our much-loved Principal Conductor Max Barley, in an emotional performance of The Messiah, we will be recruiting for his replacement in 2025.

We are now preparing for our summer concert, A Season to Sing – a joyful and imaginative celebration of music inspired by the changing seasons. The centrepiece of the programme is a brand-new choral work by Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, co-commissioned by the choir. Drawing on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, A Season to Sing reimagines the iconic concertos for choir and string quartet, using texts from poetry and scripture to bring each season vividly to life. We are thrilled that Joanna will be joining us as Guest Conductor, alongside the renowned Coull Quartet.

The programme also features a selection of English madrigals and Bob Chilcott’s Little Jazz Madrigals, performed in collaboration with members of Guildford Jazz.

We look forward to welcoming you on Saturday 28 June at Holy Trinity Church.

Emma Humphreys

Chair of Guildford Chamber Choir

We welcome new singers to the choir!

We would particularly welcome hearing from any new basses!

We are a smallish, friendly project choir, singing three concerts a year with additional events such as an annual Cathedral visit. Rehearsals take place during a 3 to 4 week period before each performance, dates of which are published at least 6 months in advance. Singers may normally sing in a particular concert only if they have attended all the rehearsals. These usually number between 5 and 7, depending on the concert programme.

The choir is run by an elected committee of volunteer members with our Principal Conductor as an advisory member.

All members contribute to the smooth running of the choir by distributing publicity materials, selling tickets, helping to prepare the concert venues on the day, and assisting with post-concert parties.

To request an audition please email:

secretary@guildfordchamberchoir.org.uk

Guildford Chamber Choir was founded in 1980 with the express aim of performing choral music of the finest quality from the 16th century to the present day. Over the years the choir has remained loyal to this aim, gaining an enviable reputation both for the high standard of its singing and for performing varied and often unusual repertoire. As well as being at the forefront of Guildford music-making, the Guildford Chamber Choir’s reputation has stretched beyond the town and county boundaries. More about the choir....

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Principal Conductor

Vacant

Click here for more information

Honorary Patrons

Mr & Mrs Michael More-Molyneux

Steven Grahl

Peter Wright

Data Protection and Retention Policy

Keeping data safe and secure is important to us and we are committed to the changes introduced by the European data protection law known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which goes into effect on 25 May 2018.To learn about data privacy and how we process personal data, please view our Data Protection and Retention Policy.

Max receives terrific send-off

Guildford Chamber Choir – Handel’s Messiah – 2nd November 2024

Last Saturday’s Guildford Chamber Choir concert was amazing in many ways. It was the final concert conducted by the Choir’s conductor for six years, Max Barley, who received warm tributes as he moved on to pastures new.

It was a performance of Handel’s Messsiah which was nothing short of stunning. And an incredible £809.87 was raised for the Cheryl King Trust which will enable at least two young people in these straightened times to have music lessons for an entire year. The concert, given in the presence of the Choir’s Honorary Patrons Mr and Mrs Michael More-Molyneux and the Deputy Mayor of Guildford was held at Holy Trinity Church in Guildford High Street, to a packed audience, notwithstanding the competition from firework displays.

For aficionados of the authentic early music movement this performance was a dream. Everything was performed at ‘low’ pitch, the trumpets were long, baroque, and superbly played by Pete Mankorious and Sam Pierce, the pace of the movements fast but not rushed, and the pausing very sensitive. And the forces, just over thirty singers and fourteen instrumentalists including the organ continuo, could well have resembled forces used at the first performance of the work in Dublin in 1742. This is before one mentions the wonderful team of young soloists: soprano Daisy Livesey, counter-tenor Richard Decker, tenor James Micklethwaite, and bass Charlie Baigent. All of them had a wonderful sense of the kind of ornamentation and improvised virtuoso flourishes that Handel, a consummate opera composer who wrote much music for exhibitionist singers, would have encouraged.

Not that Messiah is a work primarily for exhibitionism. It is rather a summary of the entire great Gospel story, beginning with many Old Testament prophecies and ending with a glorious Amen as God, sitting on the throne, and the Lamb who was slain, are glorified. That magnificent Amen began, appropriately, quietly and reverently, before rising to a tremendous and thrilling climax. Throughout the work the choir sang magnificently, clearly (every word could be heard in Holy Trinity’s fine acoustic), and sensitively.

What an evening, and what a wonderful send-off to Max Barley.

Shelagh Godwin