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About NLCC
 

Founded in 1981, the New London Chamber Choir is an acknowledged star of the European contemporary music scene and one of its foremost vocaL ensembles. NLCC performs regularly at European contemporary music festivals, has given many world and British premières, and continues to commission, record, and promote new work. James Weeks was appointed Musical Director in December 2007.

NLCC has enjoyed close and fruitful with relationships with many leading composers including Jonathan Harvey, David Sawer, Luca Francesconi, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtag, György Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, its founder-conductor James Wood, and Iannis Xenakis. Among its many premières are works written especially for the Choir by Harvey, Sawer, Francesconi, Wood, and Xenakis. NLCC's recordings include acclaimed CDs of Xenakis, Wood, and Scelsi; their CD of Stravinsky's Les Noces was the top recommendation on BBC Radio 3's 'Building a Library'.

The past few years have seen the choir perform extensively and eclectically, from their own programme of music by Xenakis and James Wood at the BBC Proms via premières of Stockhausen's Litanei 97 and James Wood's Hildegard, touring the latter through the UK, Antwerp and Maastricht.

More recently, NLCC sang Scelsi at the Archipel Festival in Geneva, performed with Throbbing Gristle in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern and participated in a run of staged performances of Stravinsky's Les Noces at the Barbican, London, under Jurjen Hempel. In 2008 NLCC performed Les Noces again at Norwich and appeared with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Harry Bicket in the world première of Like the Sea, Like Time by Kenneth Hesketh. The choir performed again in London in late 2008 and gave a final-day recital of works by Stockhausen and Kagel at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

NLCC has recently performed Harvey's Passion and Resurrection in Casa da Musica in Porto, and in May 2009 appeared with the CBSO in a programme of rarely heard Stravinsky works. It will present a programme of works by Xenakis and Saariaho in London on 25th September and return to Huddersfield in the autumn of 2009 to give a concert centred on the music of Jonathan Harvey. Plans for 2010 include a tour to Macedonia to include two world premières (and the Macedonian première of Fauré’s Requiem!), a run of performances with Mark Morris Dance Company and world premères of new works to be written for the choir by Michael Zev Gordon and Michael Finnissy.

NLCC will soon release an all-Feldman CD with Mode Records.

Read more about NLCC's exciting past performances and forthcoming NLCC events.

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'The [...] singers can pull off just about anything, as their mesmerising British première of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's Litanei 97 revealed.'
(Church Times
, 2004 - première as part of Liverpool Cathedral's centenary celebrations)

© 2010
New London Chamber Choir
Patron: Pierre Boulez
Musical Director: James Weeks