Voce Chamber Choir

The young London-based chamber choir Voce was founded in 2003 by conductor Suzi Digby and pianist Harry Briggs, who have remained associated with the group into the late 2010s. Giving concerts at Grosvenor Chapel in the Mayfair area in London's West End, the choir includes about 30 singers in their twenties and thirties. Mostly a cappella, its repertory is wide-ranging and ambitious. Voce's concerts have included European sacred music, Arabic music, gospel, jazz, and even a program alternating European music of the Renaissance with traditional African chant. Voce has been aided in realizing its goal of musical diversity by a group of guest conductors that has included Ken Burton, director of Croydon SDA Gospel Choir and one of the top gospel conductors in Britain, and Scotland's John Butt, director of the Renaissance-oriented Dunedin Consort. It gave the 2009 premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies' The Five Acts of Harry Patch, to a text by poet Andrew Motion; in that performance it was accompanied by the London Mozart Players, but it has performed mostly a cappella. Under Digby's influence, the group has performed concerts combining Renaissance and Baroque repertoire together with new commissions that respond to the earlier music in some way; in July 2010, Voce performed a program featuring an anthem composed by Giovanni Bononcini for the Duke of Marlborough that had not been performed since the 18th century, and also including a new commission from composer Mike Brewer entitled Amore Vittorioso. That year, its debut recording, Sure on This Shining Night, appeared on its own label. In 2017, it released 99 Words, featuring music by John Tavener and Roxanna Panufnik, on Signum. Digby is also the official choral conductor for the Rolling Stones, and Voce has performed at several major concerts by the group, including one at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival. Its 2018 schedule included a performance of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast in a choir-and-organ version at St. Peter's Church, Eaton Square, in London's Belgravia neighborhood.
© James Manheim /TiVo