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 fruitfulwith 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. Also in 2009 it presented a programme of works by Xenakis and Saariaho in London and returned to Huddersfield to give a concert centred on the music of Jonathan Harvey.

In 2010 NLCC has toured to Macedonia to perform two world premières, collaborated with Mark Morris Dance Company and premiered Allele by Michael Zev Gordon, a work based on sequences of genetic code sampled from choir members. This project attracted considerable media interest on account of its scientific and musical content.

Later in 2010 NLCC will premiere works by Michael Finnissy and Peter Adriaansz at the November Music Festival in s-Hertogenbosch, Holland, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. For its 30th anniversary in 2011 NLCC will present a new commission from its musical director James Weeks at the Spitalfields Festival.

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)