Find out about our upcoming concerts, or read about our past concerts to see what works we've previously performed.
Cantamus Chamber Choir will be joining Jacqui Dankworth, one of the UK’s leading jazz vocalists, a professional tap dancer, and an all-star, one off big band featuring jazz luminaries from Frome and the surrounding area to perform Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert.
Cantamus Chamber Choir will be joining Jacqui Dankworth, one of the UK’s leading jazz vocalists, a professional tap dancer, and an all-star, one off big band featuring jazz luminaries from Frome and the surrounding area to perform Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert.
Cantamus Chamber Choir led by Mike Daniels joins forces with Cotswolds-based Cantores Chamber Choir directed by Simon Harper for an inspiring evening of rich choral music. The programme features Rheinberger’s magnificent Mass for Double Choir in E-flat, alongside great works by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Schütz – promising a powerful and uplifting celebration of Romantic and sacred choral masterpieces.
Cantamus Chamber Choir led by Mike Daniels joins forces with Cotswolds-based Cantores Chamber Choir directed by Simon Harper for an inspiring evening of rich choral music. The programme features Rheinberger’s magnificent Mass for Double Choir in E-flat, alongside great works by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Schütz – promising a powerful and uplifting celebration of Romantic and sacred choral masterpieces.
Join Cantamus Chamber Choir for our Christmas concert.
What Sweeter Music, December 2018
I know full well that Cantamus is a very good choir, but having heard you last night from the other side, I now appreciate just how VERY good it is.
A stunning sound, with really tight, well-disciplined ensemble singing, much dynamic contrast - it was a terrific performance of a challenging, varied programme and, appropriately, extremely well-received by the audience.
Bernard Wight
St John Passion with the English Touring Opera, October 2016
English Touring Opera’s latest presentation is Bach’s St John Passion, but their approach is not operatic in the sense of staging the work with the trappings of costume and props. Neither is it touring in the conventional way of a production doing the rounds. Rather, ETO’s soloists and regular accompanists, the Old Street Band, are working at each venue with choruses from within that community, in a natural extension of the company’s outreach and education programme.
The impact of the opening chorus Herr, unser Herrscher, delivered by the joint forces of the Cantamus Chamber Choir, the Wiltshire Music Centre Chorus and choristers from St Laurence School with a considerable body of sound, was testimony enough to a worthy endeavour.
ETO’s most imaginative and radical intervention has been commissioning new English translations of the words of the Bach chorales, each from a different writer and embracing a wide range of beliefs. It underlines very strongly a basic principle of Bach’s structuring of the passion, where the communal voices of the Leipzig community would have joined in the periodic choral commentary and corporate affirmation. Thus John McCarthy’s experience as a hostage in Beirut brings a particular force to the chorale that focuses on Christ’s capture, and the vehemence with which the voices articulated Giles Fraser’s words “Drenched in spit and mockery” adds a vivid contemporary resonance.
Rian Evans — The Guardian
Bach Advent Cantatas with the English Touring Opera, October 2014
So many elements combined to make this one of the most divine enterprises of English Touring Opera’s outstanding season.
And what an incredible mixture of talents it was, from the ebullient conducting of the highly disciplined Cantamus Chamber Choir by Jonathan Peter Kenny, through four outstanding soloists, to The Old Street Band playing period instruments it was truly an evening to remember.
Kenny’s crafting of Bach’s chorales, seemingly almost woven by his hands, brought out the intrinsic sinews of heavenly harmony. Baritone Grant Doyle’s singing of the famous aria with only pizzicato accompaniment was surreal, and underpinning much of the solo work was the sympathetic continuo work of cellist Kinga Gaborjani.
Cantamus director of music, Michael Daniels played the trumpet in Cantata BWV 147 with his usual aplomb, and not one split note from his Bach trumpet, a most difficult instrument.
As much as anything, it was the human touch that gave the performance another dimension: the cameo of oboist Leo Duarte telling the story of his prized instruments and, joy of joys, the audience practising and eventually singing – in English, of course – the choral movement Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.
Reg Burnard — Wiltshire Times
