The choir

High-quality singing, innovative programmes and communicative performances are the hallmarks of Nonsuch Singers. Founded in 1977 and directed by Graham Caldbeck since 1996, the choir has gained a reputation for stylistic versatility in a cappella and accompanied works ranging from the Renaissance to the present day. It has frequently sought to make less familiar music accessible by exploring connections between established composers and lesser-known contemporary works.

Concerts over the past 14 seasons have featured more than 80 works by living British composers, some of whom – including Diana Burrell, Gabriel Jackson, Roxanna Panufnik, John Tavener and Judith Weir – have attended rehearsals of their music.

Nonsuch Singers, a choir of some 40 members, typically gives six or seven concerts a year, mostly in prominent London venues but also further afield, regularly performing with some of the UK’s leading instrumental ensembles and finest young vocal soloists.

Highlights have included Monteverdi’s Vespers with His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts at St Martin-in-the-Fields (recommended as “Critic’s Choice” in The Times); a critically acclaimed concert of French Baroque works, edited by Lionel Sawkins, with an orchestra led by Catherine Mackintosh and soloists including Andrew Kennedy and Emma Kirkby; and the first complete modern performance of Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer’s opera, Zaïde, Reine de Grenade, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

The choir has given a number of world premieres, including John Tavener’s Exhortation and Kohima in the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall (televised); Wild Ways, Roxanna Panufnik’s setting of Zen poems for double choir and shakuhachi; and The Land of Spices, an anthem by George Richford, commissioned by Choir & Organ magazine and performed at Ripon Cathedral.

Last December the choir rounded off a varied and successful 2010 with an enthusiastically received performance of Handel’s Messiah at Christchurch, Spitalfields. This was followed in February at St Martin-in-the-Fields with sacred music by Berlioz, Franck, Fauré, Poulenc and Duruflé, and in April by An English Passiontide, a concert at St Giles, Cripplegate, of works by Tallis, Byrd, S S Wesley, Finzi, Leighton and Howells. In June the choir travelled to Clare Parish Church in Suffolk to perform Midsummer Music, a miscellany of English and American pieces.

Nonsuch Singers’ next concert is I Was Glad – works by great British composers, from Tallis to Britten – at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 3 February. This will be followed on 10 March by a concert of Lenten and Passiontide music at Douai Abbey. Further plans for 2012 include Handel’s Israel in Egypt at St Martin’s.