Featured Choirs
Acclaimed for the beauty, precision and expressive qualities of their singing, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Choruses have been an important part of the Orchestra's programming since their founding in 1970 by the late Robert Shaw. Both are composed entirely of volunteers, who meet weekly for rehearsals and perform with the ASO several times each season. They are also featured on the majority of the ASO's recordings, having garnered 14 Grammy awards (9 for Best Choral Performance; 4 for Best Classical Recording and 1 for Best Opera Recording).
The ASO Chorus, 200 voices strong, performs large choral-symphonic works with the full orchestra, under the batons of ASO Music Director Robert Spano and ASO Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles. The Chorus has also sung for guest conductors such as Roberto Abbado, Charles Dutoit, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Labadie, John Nelson and William Fred Scott.
The ASO Chamber Chorus performs music of the Baroque and Classical eras, as well as works by modern masters such as Golijov, Tavener, Pärt, Paulus, Poulenc and Britten. Highlights of its history include a residency with the ASO and Robert Spano for California's Ojai Festival (read a review), participation with the ASO in Telarc recordings of masterworks by Bach, Golijov, Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn, and Schubert, a 2005 a cappella recording that features the Vaughan Williams Mass under Norman Mackenzie, an appearance on national television in 1987 performing Handel's Messiah under Robert Shaw's baton, and several Carnegie Hall appearances which include performances of the B-Minor Mass, the Matthew and John Passions of Bach, the Rachmaninoff Vespers and the Mozart/Levin Requiem. The Chamber Chorus has also performed under the batons of Robert King and Nicholas McGegan.
The ASO Chorus made its Carnegie Hall debut in 1976 with a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and has returned to perform there on a number of subsequent occasions, most recently on March 11, 2006 with the ASO and Robert Spano for an acclaimed performance of the Verdi Requiem. It performed in the Kennedy Center for President-elect Jimmy Carter's Inaugural Concert in 1977. In 1988, it accompanied the Orchestra on its first European tour, performing in New York, East Berlin, Zürich, Ludwigsburg, Paris, Bristol and London. It has appeared with the ASO for televised concerts on several occasions, including the 1995 national broadcast of the orchestra's 50th-anniversary celebration, in which it was conducted by both Yoel Levi and Robert Shaw, and the statewide telecast honoring the Chorus's own 25th anniversary. With the ASO it appeared in the Opening Ceremony of the 1996 Olympic Games, broadcast worldwide. The ASO Chorus has also participated for 30 years in the Martin Luther King Ecumenical service sponsored each January by the King Center in Atlanta.
The Chorus has twice been a special guest at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago: in June 2003 the Chorus, ASO and Robert Spano opened the festival with a critically acclaimed performance of John Adams oratorio El Niño, followed by a 2006 visit by the women of the Chamber Chorus, the ASO and Robert Spano for Golijov's Ainadamar. In December 2003 the ASO Chorus traveled to Berlin for a series of three triumphant performances of Britten's War Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic and conductor Donald Runnicles. The Chorus has also opened the Atlanta Falcons 2003 and 2004 seasons with a 200-voice rendition of the National Anthem.
The Walbrook Singers was established in 1979 as a choir for boys' and men's voices, specialising in the music of the Anglican cathedral tradition.
Recent highlights of the choirs' activities have included tours to Ireland and to Germany, cathedral services at Hereford and Chichester, concerts including Orff's "Carmina Burana" Britten's "War Requiem" and Macmillan's "A Child's Prayer", appearances at the Queen's Golden Jubilee Celebrations and at the Commonwealth Day Service in Westminster Abbey, and carols on Channel 4's T4.
Paul Ayres leads the rehearsal of the boys' choir and girls' choir, which are joined every three or four weeks by adult men's voices (alto, tenor and bass).
The Walbrook Singers is affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM), is registered with the Charity Commission and has a Child Protection Policy.
His compositions usually involve words – solo songs, choral pieces, music for theatre productions – and he is particularly interested in working with pre-existing music, from arrangements of folksongs, hymns, jazz standards and nursery rhymes to ‘re-compositions’ of classical works, as in Purcell’s Funeral Sentence, 4A Wreck and Messyah. Paul was a finalist in the very first BBC Young Composer of the Year competition, his children’s opera The Stolen Moon was shortlisted for the British Composer Awards in 2005, and he won the international award in the Esoterics (Seattle) Polyphonos Composition Competition in 2006. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and BBC2, and performed by many groups throughout the world. Recent commissions include When you see millions of the mouthless dead for the BBC Singers, Artemisia for solo voice & strings, Brethren for men’s voices and a setting of Pablo Neruda’s poetry in Spanish and English for Seattle choir The Esoterics.
Paul has worked as director of music at St Peter’s Church Ealing, conductor of Ealing Youth Choir, Jubilate Women’s Choir and Hanwell Children’s Choir, and accompanist for Harlow Chorus. He is currently assistant director of music at St George’s Church Hanover Square, conductor of the Walbrook Singers and of the London College of Music Chamber Choir, and accompanist for the London Pro Arte Choir. Paul has accompanied cabaret singers and played for improvised comedy shows at many venues in London and Edinburgh, and has been musical director for various youth theatre shows and school productions. He has given solo organ recitals at St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St Thomas’s Fifth Avenue, Washington National Cathedral and throughout the UK, Scandinavia, North America and Australia. Paul has led education workshops for Handel House Museum, Foundling Museum, the Yorke Trust and for many primary and secondary schools.
Some of his more unusual gigs have included accompanying a chorister singing Meatloaf’s ‘Bat out of Hell’ (for BBC2’s Even Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades); arranging ‘That’s Amore’ for string quartet (for Mark and Spencer’s promotional campaign); singing/conducting ‘I predict a riot’ in madrigal style to inebriated revellers in the West End (promotion for Bacardi) and playing ‘Happy Hardcore’ (1990s dance music sub-genre) tracks on pipe organ in Norwich, Dublin and London in connection with exhibitions by Beck’s Futures Award-winning artist Matt Stokes.