City of Glasgow Chorus


The City of Glasgow Chorus was founded in 1983 by Graham Taylor, who is still its Music Director. It has a policy of seeking out less familiar pieces in the mainstream choral repertoire. The City of Glasgow Chorus Trust is a Company limited by guarantee, with charitable status. It is registered in Scotland, and its Registered Charity number is SC 004791.

Concert series

The Chorus performs a regular series of concerts each season. In recent years, these have included a string of lesser known works by very well known composers - Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces, Holst’s Choral Symphony, Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Malcolm Arnold’s The Return of Odysseus, Bruckner’s Mass in F minor and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, as well as some of the more demanding parts of the repertoire including Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 – the Symphony of a Thousand. In November 2018, the Chorus joined forces with the Leeds Festival Chorus for a performance of Britten’s War Requiem with the BBC Philharmonic in Leeds Town Hall.
The Chorus has recorded Scots songs with Iain Sutherland, performed and recorded Shaun Davey’s epic Celtic suite – The Pilgrim, taken part in the Star Wars World Tour with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, backed Russell Watson and Sarah Brightman and appeared with Lesley Garrett in the televised Eurovision Dance Contest 2008 as the interval act. The Chorus appears regularly in concerts of West End and Broadway shows promoted by West End International.

International

Notable overseas performances include concerts in Notre Dame Cathedral in Chartres, a tour of the Czech Republic in 1996, where the Chorus performed the Prague premiere of William Walton’s oratorio, Belshazzar's Feast, with the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra and in October 2013, as part of their 30th anniversary celebrations, the Chorus travelled to Poland for a week performing in Krakow and Opole including a performance of Verdi's Requiem with the Opole Philharmonic Orchestra of Poland.
In 2016 the Chorus travelled to China performing Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony in Beijing and Brahms’ German Requiem in Nanjing and Shanghai.

Recordings

The Chorus has made a number of recordings, the most recent of which is a recording of Choral Classics: Something Old, Something New made in the Caird Hall in Dundee, with organist David Hamilton, which was released in November 2014.