The King's Singers

02 / 08 / 2010

Performance tonight in the Lahti Organ Festival

This evening, we will perform in Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland as part of the Lahti Organ Festival. Our programme tonight, entitled 'Friends' examines different types of artistic friendships and collaborations, from the Renaissance to modern day, featuring works by Byrd, Tallis, Bairstow, Finzi and Gilbert and Sullivan.

Tomorrow we travel to Warsaw for a performance at the Polish Radio Hall as part of the Chopin Festival before returning to the UK for the last concert of the term at Tewkesbury Abbey for The Three Choirs Festival.

Pictured below is the beautiful Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland.

09 / 08 / 2010

King's Singers open Lakes District Summer Music in style

The Westmorland Gazette
Friday, 6th August 2010

by Clive Walkley

Each year, Lake District Summer Music opens in style with a major concert by a group of musicians of international standing. This year was no exception as the King’s Singers took to the stage in Kendal Parish Church to present a varied programme which delighted a near-capacity audience.

As a brand name, the King’s Singers have a long history. The membership of the group has changed over the years; many former members have moved on to other branches of the music profession to be replaced by a new generation of singers, but the technical skill and cool, creamy sound, which has been a distinguishing feature of the group over such a long period, has remained and is instantly recognisable.

Listening to the six-man ensemble, justly described in the LDSM Souvenir Book as ‘one of the world’s most celebrated vocal groups,’ it was not hard to see why the group has earned this reputation. One word sums up their performance: faultless. Ensemble, tuning, blend, rhythmic precision, articulation – all the qualities one looks for in a good vocal ensemble - are there in abundance.

The programme demonstrated the group’s versatility: motets and anthems from the renaissance period, romantic partsongs from the nineteenth century, and complex works from our own time – all presented with technical skill, and humour when called for, as in Paul Drayton’s Masterpiece, a light-hearted affectionate tribute to seven masters of classical music, written in response to the King’s Singers’ Composers Competition in 1981.

Another highlight was the South African composer Peter Louis van Dijk’s lovely Horizons – a piece inspired by a San Bushman cave painting dating back to the 1700s reflecting the destruction of an ancient peaceful way of life by the arrival of European so-called civilisation. The sheer simplicity of this piece was striking – and moving!

View the entire article on The Westmorland Gazette website here.

16 / 08 / 2010

Review from The Observer, Three Choirs Festival

On Saturday 7 August we performed in the Three Choirs Festival at Tewkesbury Abbey to a sold out audience. Below is a review by Fiona Maddocks from The Observer. 

The Three Choirs festival, centred in Gloucester this season, has always been fearful of adventure, and loyal to its local stars, Elgar and Vaughan Williams. This year, with a new director in Adrian Partington, there's a perceptible rustle of change in the air. I caught the opening concert, by the King's Singers, in the serene splendour of Tewkesbury Abbey. A sacred first half spanned Hildegard of Bingen to John McCabe, Ivan Moody and Henryk Górecki. Part two was pure fun: clever close-harmony arrangements of Gilbert and Sullivan by former King's singer Bob Chilcott, and a group of folk songs reinvented by members past and present. Just as Hockney chose a limited palette for Rake, so does this ensemble, which can make of six unaccompanied voices a microcosmos and a miracle.

Click here to view the full article. 

26 / 08 / 2010

Preparing to become a King's Singer

Read Johnny's latest update, here.