About the
London Oriana Choir

The London Oriana Choir is one of Britain's leading choral groups and one of the most exciting in London. Since 1996 it has been under the directorship of David Drummond, who has further developed the choir with his vision, innovative teaching ideas and new repertoire.

The choir has performed in all of London's major concert halls, including the Southbank Centre, the Barbican and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as the major church and cathedral buildings including St Martin-in-the-Fields, St James's Piccadilly and St Paul's and Southwark Cathedrals. Abroad, it has given concerts in such venues as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and the Pushkin Palace outside St Petersburg, at festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Strasbourg, Aachen and Cork, and at other important venues in Russia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Holland, Iceland, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium. In Summer 2007 the choir performed a successful tour to Bergamo, Italy and will tour to Riga in May 2008.

The choir's standards are high: choir members have access to the choir's two professional singing teachers and are given regular voice assessments. Its repertoire broad, ranging from the great choral and orchestral works by Verdi, Brahms, Mozart, Handel and Bach to contemporary commissions. A cappella music is sung in many languages and in all styles from early Renaissance to the present day, from secular to sacred, classical to jazz and including popular and folk music from around the world. The choir is often accompanied by professional orchestras and has recently performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Brandenburg Sinfonia, and Fine Arts Brass.

As well as its own concert series, the London Oriana Choir is often invited to sing for other organisations including BBC television. The choir has produced four commercial CD recordings, including a world première of Sir Henry Walford Davies's cantata Everyman with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, which received Editor's Choice awards in both Gramophone magazine and International Record Review. In April 2008 another world première recording was released, Armstrong Gibbs's choral symphony Odysseus with the BBC Concert Orchestra.