As Great Britain’s only full-time professional chamber choir, the BBC Singers occupies a unique position in British musical life. For more than seventy-five years the group has commissioned, premiered, and recorded new works by many of the 20th century’s leading composers and worked with some of its most distinguished conductors. Soon after the company’s organization in 1924, the BBC recognized the need for a permanent choir. The ensemble’s pioneering daily live broadcasts of religious services, with much of the music delivered only minutes before broadcast time, helped develop its acclaimed musicianship and sight-reading skill.
Now world renowned for technical virtuosity, versatility, and tonal beauty, the BBC Singers is equally comfortable with Byrd, Bach, and Birtwistle. It broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television and has a busy schedule of concert performances in the British Isles and abroad. Though the chorus’s repertoire includes many liturgical and religiously inspired masterpieces and it has participated in a festival of Jewish music in London, the Milken Archive has introduced the BBC Singers to an entirely new repertoire of Judaic works, both liturgical and secular.
