The Choir of Royal Holloway
“The Choir of Royal Holloway and Music Director Rupert Gough ensure that Oxbridge ensembles don’t have it all their own way when it comes to great university choirs.”
The Choir of Royal Holloway is considered to be one of the finest mixed-voice collegiate choirs in Great Britain, with their recordings attracting top reviews from all major music publications.
Created at the time of the foundation of Royal Holloway in 1886, the choir was originally only for women’s voices. The mixed choir now comprises 24 Choral Scholars who undertake a busy schedule of weekly services, as well as concerts, international tours, recordings, and TV and radio broadcasts. They are the only choir to give a weekly concert performance and during an average year give around 40-50 concerts with a particular specialism in contemporary music.
The choir has one of the busiest recording schedules of any collegiate choir with an extensive discography with Decca, Convivium, Hyperion, Signum, and Naxos amongst others. The choir is renowned for its performances of Nordic and Baltic music and has recorded works by Vytautas Miškinis, Rihards Dubra, Bo Hansson, Tõnu Kõrvits, and Ola Gjeilo to great acclaim. The 2018 release Winter Songs with Gjeilo was No. 1 in the UK and US classical charts and they have since recorded a follow-up album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra released in September 2023. In the same year, the choir released an album of choral music by Belgian composer, Flor Peeters, All Angels, a collection of music by George Arthur and Matthew Coleridge's Requiem which was Classic FM's 'Album of the Week'. Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the choir recorded several tracks for a commemorative album released by Decca Classics which was no. in the Christmas Classical Charts. During the pandemic, the choir released recordings of music by Ben Parry and Joanna Marsh, a live-concert recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia, a recently-rediscovered mass by Pierre Villette with alumna Sarah Fox and a new oratorio - 'As we are changed' by Carson Cooman.
“The Choir of Royal Holloway has attained standards of musicianship and technical refinement high above the reach of most student ensembles.”
“A truly fabulous sound”
The choir regularly collaborates with and performs alongside many famous ensembles. These have included the King’s Singers, the BBC Singers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Onyx Brass, Fretwork and the jazz-trio Acoustic Triangle. The group also celebrates the work of living composers and has commissioned works from Sir James MacMillan, Gabriel Jackson, Richard Rodney Bennett, Cecilia McDowall, and Paul Mealor. International performances are also an integral part of the choir’s work. They have toured most European countries, and have been broadcast on national television and radio all over the world. A tour of all three Baltic states saw the choir performing in the Latvian Song Festival with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, in a concert (sung in Estonian) broadcast nationally on the Estonian Day of Independence. Further afield, the group has visited Beijing and numerous tours to the US and Canada.
The choir regularly sings at high-profile events which have included the Annual Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall (live on BBC television), an awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and the Magna Carta 800 celebrations, in which they performed a new work by John Rutter in the presence of HM the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. More recently they sang at the wedding of Ellie Goulding and Caspar Jopling at York Minster.
Rupert Gough has been director of Choral Music and College Organist at Royal Holloway, University of London since 2005. He is also Organist and Director of Music at London’s oldest surviving church, Saint Bartholomew the Great, which maintains a professional choir. At Royal Holloway Rupert has developed the choral programme to include weekly choral recitals, choral conducting courses for undergraduates, frequent new choral commissions and transformed the Chapel Choir into an elite group of 24 choral scholars. The Choir has particularly come to prominence through their series of recordings for Hyperion Records and for their role in popularising contemporary composers from the Baltics States, USA and UK. Their recording Winter Songs of the music of Ola Gjeilo is one of Decca Classics most successful albums and was top of the US and UK classical charts. The choir is now greatly in demand for recording work from a variety of record labels, composers and orchestras and travels widely for concert performances.
Rupert Gough - Director