All workshops are on Wednesday evenings from 7.30 - 10pm at our regular rehearsal venue, Stanborough School, Lemsford Rd, Welwyn Garden City, AL8 6YR Workshops cost £5 which includes music hire and tea and a chance to sample our excellent cakes! Elgar – The Music Makers This beautiful work is based on a poem ‘Ode’ by Arthur O'Shaughnessy and celebrates the importance of art to society. 30th October Haydn – Harmoniemesse Haydn’s last major work combines wind instruments with choral voices in this glorious ‘High Mass’. It is a vast work that is a joy to sing. 6th November Karl Jenkins – The Armed Man Jenkins composed this work as‘A Mass for Peace’ a commission for the Millennium celebrations and ... Read More

Hertfordshire Chorus has been asked to perform George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in Wroclaw, Poland later this year. The choir will be joining leading conductor and renowned American specialist Wayne Marshall, the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and top-quality soloists Indira Mahajan, Angela Renée Simpson, Ronald Samm and Kevin Short in the International FestivalWratislavia Cantans on Sunday 15thSeptember. The concert forms part of a year-long national project to commemorate the centenary of Poland regaining its independence after the First World War. Porgy and Bess was written in 1935, just two years before Gershwin’s untimely death at the age of only 38. The work was based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It is considered to ... Read More

The Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival is now into its 7th year. The 2018 Festival celebrates 'Brahms and Friends' and will feature music by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann. The singers of Hertfordshire Chorus are delighted to have been asked to return again to sing Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem in the Finale concert on Sunday 23rd September 2018 at 8pm. Performers The Chorus will take to the stage with a marvellous line up of internationally acclaimed performers –Ailish Tynan, Soprano,Ben McAteer, Baritone, the Faust Chamber Orchestra and conductor Mark Austin. Historic Location The concert will take place in the Banqueting Hall of the Old Palace.  John Morton the Bishop of Ely built The Old Palace around 1485. The remaining wing contains the Banqueting Hall, ... Read More

Hertfordshire Chorus was very pleased to have been asked to sing in a special performance of War Horse – The Story In Concert  for BBC Radio 2 in the special venue of Coventry Cathedral on Friday 18th May 2018.  The concert was part of Coventry's Big Weekend Fringe Festival and was recorded for later broadcast. It also featured acclaimed actors Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow and the wonderful BBC Concert Orchestra under the direction of conductor David Charles Abell. The story of the book and the play War Horse has been a huge success in recent years. The story is by now well-known – at the outbreak of World War One, Joey, Albert’s horse, is sold to the army and sent to ... Read More

Hertfordshire Chorus has been asked to sing in the final concert of this year’s Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival in September – the third time we have been invited in the seven years of the Festival. The Festival was launched in a special concert in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House recently and a small group of singers sang an extract from Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem as a taster for the performance of the full work in the Festival itself. The concert also featured fabulous performances by some of the people who will be appearing in the Festival, including cellist and Artistic Director of the Festival Guy Johnston, acclaimed tenor James Gilchrist and amazing pianists Anna Tilbrook, Tom Poster and ... Read More

How do you launch a recording of lovely music written by a little-known composer like Michael Hurd? By singing it in a concert of course! So we're really pleased to launch this recording on the label Lyrita Recorded Edition at a concert in St John's Smith Square on the 14th April 2018.   How this recording came about This was another new experience for Hertfordshire Chorus. The British Music Society approached us about recording five works by British composer Michael Hurd.  Michael Hurd died in 2006, aged 77 after 50 years composing a wide variety of music.  The BMS established a charitable trust to administer a legacy from his estate, with the aim of fostering and encouraging recordings and performances of his music. ... Read More

David Temple, Music Director of Hertfordshire Chorus, has been awarded an MBE for services to music in the New Year’s Honours list. On hearing of the award David said “I am both proud and thrilled to receive this award - and I would like to dedicate it to all who have supported me throughout my career both on the concert platform and behind the scenes.” David Temple is one of the country’s foremost choral conductors, who founded and continues to direct Crouch End Festival Chorus. Musical Director of Hertfordshire Chorus since 2000, he has been instrumental in developing the choir to a consistently high standard of performance. His enthusiasm for commissioning new choral music and supporting young composers has resulted ... Read More

We were absolutely delighted that our CD reached number 7 in the Specialist Classical Charts in the first week of sales and equally delighted with this fantastic review in Gramophone "This important release should be in every keen choral singer’s Christmas stocking." Read the whole review. Gramophone Review. In addition to Gramophone, we had a wonderful review by Rob Cowan in Classical Ear. Read it here Classical Ear. The story In 2009 we commissioned Will Todd, who wrote the highly successful Mass in Blue for us, to write a setting for Ode to a Nightingale for one of our Patrons, Rod Jones. We launched it in the Barbican in 2011 and sang it again a few years later because we ... Read More