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Choir Biography
“They are undoubtedly one of the great choirs of the world” Jonathan Harvey, Composer
One of Europe’s most prominent chamber choirs, the JCS is renowned for its virtuosity
and intensity of spirit, as well as for an astoundingly wide repertoire, ranging
from the 16th Century to the present day. An important element of the choir’s raison
d’être is its commitment to contemporary and new music, including a high proportion
of first performances, and supported by several highly-
Formed in 1988, by conductor Peter Broadbent, the choir first came to prominence when it won the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition in 1990. Since then it has maintained its profile in the music world, winning an impressive list of national and international competitions leading to many invitations. JCS regularly appears at all the UK’s major music festivals, including Bath, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, City of London, Chelsea, Presteigne, Spitalfields, Three Choirs, Huddersfield Contemporary Music and the BBC Proms. Equally prominent in Europe, JCS has performed at festivals in France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Russia, broadcasting in many countries as well as on BBC and Classic FM. The choir and Peter Broadbent were honoured to receive the “Guidoneum Award” from the Fondazione Guido d’Arezzo in recognition of its achievements and promotion of choral music. In the USA, JCS has given concerts at Stanford University, in Los Angeles and San Diego, and appeared at the National Convention of the American Choral Directors’ Association, in Texas.
Performances with orchestras include many with the City of London Sinfonia with the late Richard Hickox, CBE, and with Sir Mark Elder, Nicholas Kraemer and Stuart Bedford, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Sir Andrew Davies), the Southern Sinfonia, the Britten Sinfonia (Alec Roth), the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Northern Sinfonia and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Sir Roger Norrington). Soloists have included Dame Felicity Lott, Carolyn Sampson, Patricia Rozario, Sarah Fox, Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams and Stephen Varcoe as well as instrumentalists Philippa Davies, Paul Watkins, Madeleine Mitchell and Robert Cohen.
To date, the JCS has a discography of some 22 recordings. On the ASV label are discs
of music by Jonathan Harvey, Francis Poulenc and Samuel Barber, and for EMI Classics,
Garland for Linda. Other releases include A Plum Pudding with Dame Felicity Lott
and Gabriel Woolf (White Line), Angels Sing! -
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