Green-Shoot

Join a fantastic choir in 2012!

If your new year’s resolution was to join a choir, Crouch End Festival Chorus wants to hear from you. Having been around for nearly 30 years, we’ve been thrilled to see how popular choral music has become recently, and how many people with good voices are approaching us to find out more about what we do. Our conductor David Temple even had a cameo appearance on Gareth Malone’s The Choir, the show which has inspired so many people to experience the benefits of singing in a group.

An exceptionally welcoming choir largely run by volunteers, Crouch End Festival Chorus offers a unique blend of friendly rehearsals, musical variety and professional standards of choral singing.

A London choir with a wide reputation

Crouch End Festival Chorus is one of the best classical choirs in the UK, known for its versatility and eclectic repertoire. As well as promoting several of our own classical concerts each year in great venues such as the Barbican and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, we appear regularly at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, and have performed at all the major concert halls in the UK including the Royal Festival Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Kings Place and The Hammersmith Apollo.

We have sung with great conductors including Arvo Pärt, Daniele Gatti and Jiří Bělohlávek, and with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. And we receive excellent reviews in the national media and specialist music press.

A classical choir that knows how to be a rock choir

Although our main focus is on classical choral music, we have also worked with contemporary rock and pop artists such as Noel Gallagher, Ray Davies of The Kinks (one of our patrons) and Basement Jaxx. We are frequently booked to provide choral singers for film, TV and radio and for concerts with other orchestras and artists – notably for Hollywood composer Ennio Morricone, another of our patrons.

Audition for Crouch End Festival Chorus

Crouch End Festival Chorus is always looking for good singers, and we hold auditions throughout the year. The first step is to email Liz Lawlor at newmembers@cefc.org.uk, to book your place as a guest at one of our Friday rehearsals in Muswell Hill. If you then decide you would definitely like to join the choir, you should download and complete the application form below as soon as possible and send it to the address given, or hand it to Liz Lawlor at one of your trial rehearsals.

You will be invited to take a voice test either on a Friday evening before the rehearsal or, if we have several applicants at once, on a different evening in Muswell Hill. There’s more about the voice test in the links below, and full details will be given to you when you apply to join.

Resources for new singers

CEFC application form (Word document)
Audition information – don’t be afraid!
Information about CEFC for new singers – more about our rehearsals, concerts and subscriptions

Registered Charity No. 1110790