THE CHOIR
OF NEW COLLEGE
Edward
Higginbottom, Director
Under the leadership of Dr.
Edward Higginbottom, the Choir of New College Oxford has achieved a worldwide
reputation. At the same time, it is
still recognizably what the founder of New College, William of Wykeham,
envisaged in the fourteenth century: a choir of sixteen boy choristers and
clerks, whose duty was and still is to provide a sung liturgy in the grandest
chapel to be built in Oxford. The adult
singers of the Choir (alto, tenor, bass) are currently made up of seven lay
clerks and eight academic clerks who are Oxford undergraduates.
In the 20th century,
New College began to appoint prestigious musicians as Organist and Director of
the Choir, notably Sir William Harris, Sir John Dykes-Bower and Sir David
Lumsden. Under Dr. Lumsden, the Choir’s
repertory was greatly expanded and the Choir began to reach a larger audience
through LP recordings and concert tours.
The Choir’s excellence has been recognized by frequent
appearances at the BBC Promenade concerts and by the many tours abroad: the
U.S. (2005), Japan, Australia, Brazil, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech
Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Malta and the Low Countries. Their touring schedule takes
in a number of European countries on a regular basis, often in the company of
The Academy of Ancient Music. They have also performed with other major
orchestral ensembles such as The King’s Consort, The Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightment and the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra.
The Choir’s numerous recordings – over 70 CDs in the
current catalog – range from specialist collections such as a compilation of
sacred music drawn from the Archives of Malta Cathedral to popular anthologies
of choral music such as Agnus Dei,
which has sold more than 300,000 copies worldwide. The Choir collaborated with The King’s
Consort in their recordings of the complete sacred music of Henry Purcell as
well as Handel’s oratorios. Another
recording project has been the series called “Masterpieces of the Renaissance”
for Collins Classics, featuring some of the great polyphonists of the sixteenth
century, a series which was reissued on the CRD label.
Their Naxos release of Bach’s St. John Passion, sung in German and
recorded over a period of some eighteen months, is unique in that all of the
soloists, including James Gilchrist (Evangelist) and James Bowman, have at one
time sung in New College Choir. Other more
recent releases were the first recorded performance of John Tavener’s Total Eclipse (Harmonia Mundi), Coronation Anthems (Decca), the world
premiere recording of Pergolesi’s Marian
Vespers (Erato), Handel’s Messiah
(Naxos), and a CD of music by the early 16th century English
composer Nicholas Ludford (French K617).
For this latter recording, the Choir won a prestigious Gramophone award
(international) in the Early Music category.
In May of 2009 the Choir performed and recorded Haydn’s The Creation (Philomusica) which was
named Choral CD of the Month in the December 2009 issue of BBC Magazine.
Edward Higginbottom was educated at Cambridge
University, where he earned a B.A., Mus.B, and PhD. He was appointed Director of New College
Oxford at the age of 29. Under his
direction, the Choir has become renowned for its interpretations of Renaissance
and Baroque music as well as music from folksong to Tavener and Part. An objective of the Choir has been to sing a
particularly wide range of music, in the conviction that music-making is
revitalized by the challenges of an eclectic repertory. Visit their website at www.newcollegechoir.co.uk.
The April 2010 tour of the United States takes the New
College Choir to Jacksonville Beach FL, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver, New
York City, Chestnut Hill PA and Washington DC (three choir festival with the
choirs of St. Thomas Church, NYC and the National Cathedral Choir).