The Manchester Chorale

The Manchester Chorale is an auditioned semi-professional SATB choir, based in Manchester, UK.

We rehearse on Tuesday evenings during termtime, at St Matthew’s Hall, Church Lane, Stretford, M32 9DB.

For examples of our repertoire, take a look through these concert programmes, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky or YouTube.

Looking for a choir to join? Contact us to book a taster.

Need tickets for our next concerts? Buy them here.

Interested in booking the Chorale for your event? Contact us with the details.

This is why our members sing with us:

The Manchester Chorale Story

Founded and funded by the BBC in 1979, conductor Jeffrey Wynn Davies led the Manchester Chorale’s first concert at the Royal Northern College of Music.  BBC funding ceased in the late 1980s and since then the Chorale has been totally independent, musically and financially, becoming a registered charity in 1995.  Jeffrey Wynn Davies conducted the Chorale until 2002, when Laura Jellicoe took over. Our current musical director Jill Henderson-Wild replaced Laura Jellicoe in 2006.

The Chorale’s membership includes both founding members and singers born during the subsequent decades, encompassing a great diversity in age as well as experience and backgrounds.  Together we’ve celebrated both Chorale and personal milestones, with long-lasting friendships built through sharing making music together.

Our Music and our Concerts

The Chorale thrives on singing a wide variety of music from the 1500s to the present day, including familiar music ranging from well-known early composers such as Tallis through to brand new compositions including by our own choir members, with musical styles extending from classical to jazz to pop.

We’ve enjoyed performing with celebrities such as Luciano Pavarotti (celebrating the opening of the Manchester Arena in 1995 in front of an audience of 15,000), with Michael Ball, Michael Crawford and Russell Watson in 2000, and with Aled Jones in 2015.  Our Bridgewater Hall performances have included regular concerts with Sir Karl Jenkins, including The Armed Man, Requiem and One World, as well as the UK Premiere of The Peacemakers in 2012.  At the same venue we have also formed part of Jonathan Cohen’s Singalong Christmas Eve Concerts for many years, as well as singing in Organ Galas, St George’s Day Concerts and for the Last Night of the Autumn Proms.

We often perform locally with other musicians, from professional orchestras such as Manchester Camerata and the Manchester Concert Orchestra through to brass bands and children’s choirs. Further afield we have performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall, in Sheffield, at Fountains Abbey, in Cawthorne in Yorkshire, at Hawkshead Parish Church in the Lake District, at Bolton Priory, at Ripon Cathedral and at the Birmingham Arena.  However, every season also brings concerts in local venues across the Greater Manchester area, and we enjoy opportunities to include informal performances, such as for people with dementia and their carers. 

Broadcasting

Founded as a choir for radio broadcast, the Manchester Chorale has continued this over the years.  In 1998, we sang live from the chapel of Lyme Hall for a Sunday morning magazine Lent in the Park, and in 2001 we were the chosen choir for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special edition of BBC1’s Songs of Praise.  From 2007 to 2017 we regularly provided the choir for the Radio 4 Daily Service, and in 2012, we were delighted to form part of the UK Cultural Olympiad, performing Pure Gold: a 4×4 Relay by Luke Carver Goss, words by Ian McMillan, with the Black Dyke Band.  The Olympiad included a World Premiere at the RNCM broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and performances at the Bridgewater Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall (broadcast on BBC Radio 2) and London South Bank.

More unusual performances have included a chorus of Elvis Presleys for a Granada TV game show, and a church choir for an episode of the BBC’s comedy-drama Common as Muck.

Our broadcasts have also included participation in choral competitions, the best known of which is the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition, where we made regular televised appearances in the final stages.  We also achieved competition successes at Sligo, the Elgar Choral Festival at Worcester, and in Bangor (NI).

Chorale Tours

Tours in the UK and in Europe have always formed part of our activities, including visits to Angouleme, Picardy, Notre-Dame and Chartres in France, Norway, Portugal (singing Mozart’s Coronation Mass in Faro with the Orchestra of the Algarve), the Mosel Valley in Germany and the Isle of Man. More recent tours have included joint concerts with other choirs such as Koor Acantus in Antwerp, Belgium (2018), the Kent Chamber Choir (2019), and the Choir of St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny, Eire (2022).