The Finchley Children's Music Group was founded in 1958 to give the first amateur performance of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde. It has pursued an ongoing commitment to the commissioning of new music for children’s voices, including works by Brian Chapple, Malcolm Williamson, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Alex Roth, Piers Halliwell, and Christopher Gunning. The group has performed under such conductors as Kurt Masur, Matthias Bamert, André Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and their president, Sir Colin Davis.
Recent appearances at the BBC Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, London, include Alex Roth’s Earth and Sky (2000) and Britten’s War Requiem (2004), while other highlights have included Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges, under André Previn, and High Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris on All Saints’ Day 2003, performing Britten’s Missa Brevis. FCMG has made recordings for television, radio, film, and disc—most recently for a 2004 TV musical of A Christmas Carol for NBC—and has led the singing in prestigious events such as the VE and VJ Day memorial celebrations before Her Majesty the Queen. Their 30th anniversary production of Noye’s Fludde was the first fully staged Promenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and in their 40th anniversary year they took part in the world premiere of the children’s opera Alexander the Great by David Blake, on the island of Lesbos. The group’s music director since 2001 is Grace Rossiter.
