St. John's Voices

St. John's Voices are a relatively new choir at Cambridge University, complementing the venerable Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge. Mixed-gender and comprising adult singers, St. John's Voices include singers from other colleges at Cambridge, as well as from the wider community beyond the university. St. John's Voices were founded in 2013. The group's official relationship to the centuries-old Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, is one of sister choir, and the Voices differ from its predecessor in significant ways; the choir is mixed in gender (the Choir of St. John's College includes only men and boy choristers), and all are adults. It advocates strongly for contemporary music (more so than the Choir of St. John's College) and has performed several works by student member composers. The principal function of the choir, however, is quite traditional: it now fulfills the function of singing at weekly Evensong services in the St. John's College Chapel. The choir consists of 30 singers in soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voice ranges, chosen by audition; singers from St. John's College, other units within Cambridge University, and the larger Cambridge community have been selected. The director of St. John's Voices since the group's founding has been Graham Walker, a concert cellist as well as a choral conductor. The St. John's Voices also present independent concerts and have toured in the Western hemisphere and Asia, as well as in Britain. The choir's first international tour began in late 2015 and culminated in sold-out performances of Handel's Messiah, HWV 56, in Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2020, St. John's Voices made its recording debut on the Naxos label with an album of works by composer William Mathias, including a setting of texts from the Exeter Book of Riddles as well as of poems by Edward Lear. In 2023, the group returned with the album Pavel Chesnokov: Sacred Choral Music.
© James Manheim /TiVo