Join Leicester Bach Choir in 2018/19

Leicester Bach Choir offers a warm welcome to singers. We’ve some exciting concerts in 2018/9, being performed in the wonderful acoustic of St James the Greater Church on London Road and conducted by our Music Director Richard Laing. We joined the Bardi Orchestra, Leicestershire Chorale, Leicester Philharmonic Choir and Leicester Cathedral Choristers at the De Montfort Hall to sing Britten's War Requiem in November 2018.
We’re especially keen to recruit sopranos, tenors and basses. If you’d like to join us , call our Choir Secretary, Gail on 0116 270 7462 who would be delighted to tell you more about joining the choir.

Available now, a history of the Leicester Bach Choir.

Leicester Bach Choir hosts the Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland Musical Events Diary here

Next Concert Saturday 30th November 2019

Autumn Concert

St James the Greater

Gjeilo : Dark Night of the Soul
Bach : Aria 'Vergnügte Ruh'
Reger : Cantata 'Meinem Jesum lass ich nicht'
Brahms : Zwei Gesänge, op.91
Beethoven : Elegischer Gesang
Richter : On the Nature of Daylight
Vasks : The Fruit of Silence
Whitacre : Five Hebrew Love Songs
Gjeilo : Luminous Night of the Soul

Conductor: Richard Laing

With: Bach Camerata

Follow Concerts link for details.

Our Next Come & Sing will be held on Saturday 25 January 2020 at Leicester Grammar School, Great Glen, Leicester LE8 9FL from 10.00 am to 5.30 pm.

We will be learning and singing Brahms' Nänie (Song of Lamentation) and Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny)

For more details see our Come & Sing page

"The 90^th anniversary season saw the Leicester Bach Choir continuing its long history celebrating great choral music. This sociable group perform a wide range of repertoire and are a testimony to the joy to be found in singing together. The LBC has brought much pleasure to audiences for 90 years. Congratulations LBC and thank you!" - Joanne Lunn, President.

In 2017/18 Leicester Bach Choir celebrated the 90^th Anniversary of its foundation, by the then Master of the Music at the newly hallowed Cathedral, Dr Gordon Slater. The first performance was given in the Cathedral, on 1 April 1928, of selections from J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Under the nearly forty-year tenure of Dr Slater’s successor, Dr George Gray, the choir’s remit was expanded to include works by many composers, both contemporary and of the past, but the music of Bach has remained central to the repertoire, with the major works, both Passion settings, the Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio, being performed at regular intervals. Successive conductors have made their own stamp on the choir, and under the present Music Director, Richard Laing (who after fourteen years is the second longest holder of that post), the choir is continuing to produce concerts of the highest quality, securely fulfilling the aims of its founders: several years ago, however, the link with the Cathedral was finally severed, with the choir moving to the Church of St James the Greater as its home for rehearsals and concerts.

This 90^th Anniversary Season had the concert on 24 March 2018 as its centrepiece, coming almost exactly 90 years after that first concert. Here Bach’s extended motet Jesu, meine Freude, is set against music by one of his predecessors, Heinrich Schütz, and that of later German and Austrian composers much of whose choral music has its seeds in that of Bach, notably Mendelssohn and Brahms. The other two concerts, and January’s Come and Sing, contained music by British composers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries who also held Bach in reverence: Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry of an earlier generation, and their pupils, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Hamish MacCunn and Ralph Vaughan Williams, as well as Ireland’s pupil Benjamin Britten. Benjamin Britten’s cantata St Nicolas, also owes a debt to the cantatas of Bach.

Thus Leicester Bach Choir can both look back with pride on 90 years of quality music-making in the city, and forward with confidence to the centenary and beyond – surely both excellent reasons to celebrate!

Last Concert Saturday 15th June 2019

Summer Concert at St James the Greater

Fauré: Requiem
Langlais: Messe Solennelle
Organ interpolations by Couperin and De Grigny

Soprano - Sasha Lawrence
Baritone - Chris Ouvry-Jones

Organist: Simon Hogan
Conductor: Richard Laing

Past Concert Saturday 13th April 2019

Spring Concert at St James the Greater

Mozart: Mass in C minor
Haydn: The Representation of Chaos
Mendelssohn: Psalm 95

Sopranos - Katie Trethewey and Kirsty Hopkins
Tenor - Andrew Henley
Baritone - Geoff Williams

with Bach Camerata
Conductor: Richard Laing

Past Concert Saturday 10th November 2018

De Montfort Hall With Bardi Orchestra

Benjamin Britten: War Requiem

Past Concert Saturday 16th June 2018

MacCunn: The Wreck of the Hesperus
Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Elgar: As Torrents in Summer
Stanford: The Princess

Past Concert Saturday 24th March 2018

Jesus, my Joy: uplifting choral masterpieces from three centuries

Pre-concert talk.

Richard Laing in conversation with Professor John Young, Professor of Composition, De Montfort University.

Past concert 25th November 2017

Holst: The Hymn of Jesus Britten: St Nicolas

Past concert 10th June 2017

The Two Golden Ages of Cathedral Music

Past concert 8th April 2017

JS Bach: St John Passion

With New Leicester Youth Chorus

Past concert Come & Sing 28th January 2017

"Captains Courageous" (Cantatas by British Romantic Composers)

To read more, click on the Concerts button.

This site gives a flavour of what we are like and what we do. The buttons on the left will help you find the information you are looking for. We hope it encourages you to join us as singer or audience. If you are looking for a medium-sized (55) choir to join, you may be interested to hear what a new singer wrote to us recently:

'Thanks so much for inviting me to the AGM and rehearsal last night.  I loved it and would absolutely love to join the choir. I found you all very welcoming, and really liked what I heard at the AGM about the ethos. Singing together can so powerful and moving - life-enhancing.'