Concert: The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Experience the transcendent voices of the world-famous Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, under the Cathedral’s soaring vaulted ceilings. Don’t miss your opportunity to see one of the world’s oldest and most beloved choral groups perform in Washington, DC. “I would happily sit in King’s College Chapel listening to this choir sing for the rest of my days.” —The London Times
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About the Concert
This evening’s concert brings together some of the riches of the English and European choral traditions, fused for decades in the unique sound-world of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. Opening the first half with renaissance polyphony, our journey weaves together music contemporaneous with the early years of the building of the Chapel of King’s College, and presents music heard annually in that building to the present day, culminating in the music of Orlando Gibbons, himself a chorister at King’s, and whose 400th year’s mind we are marking throughout 2025. In the second half we reflect during this season of Lent on words selected by Herbert Howells for his Requiem. This is not a liturgical setting of the Propers of the Mass for the Dead but instead a compilation of words from the Psalms and Book of Common Prayer, similar to the ‘human’ Requiem of Brahms. Howells was no stranger to Cambridge and held a long association with King’s, heard here tonight in his eponymous setting of the Te Deum, written for the Chapel in 1944. And to bring things to the present, we celebrate one of our more famous former students of King’s in the music of Dame Judith Weir, recently retired Master of the King’s Music, and who came to King’s as an undergraduate in 1973.
About the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Founded in the 15th century, the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge is one of the world’s best-known choral groups. Every Christmas Eve, millions worldwide tune in to A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, a service that has been broadcast almost every year by the BBC since 1928. The Choir owes its existence to King Henry VI, who envisaged the daily singing of services in the magnificent college chapel. Singing daily services remains an important part of the lives of the choristers, who are educated at King’s College School, and the choral scholars and organ scholars, who study a variety of subjects at the University of Cambridge. The Choir has produced numerous professional singers including James Gilchrist, Christopher Purves and Gerald Finley. The Choir’s worldwide fame and reputation, enhanced by its many recordings, has led to invitations to perform around the globe, and to an extensive international touring schedule.