Chiara Alfano Voice: soprano Nationality: Italian/German Occupation: DPhil Student Home: Kings Cross Started singing: when the radio in my mom’s car was stolen. Favourite music: as long as it is good and not country, I am not fussy. Fave composer: Bach and Mozart. Fave singer: Natalie Dessay Fave CML concert: Spirit of Baroque in June 2011. Hobbies: cooking, culture, reading, traveling & skiing.
Collegium Musicum of London - with a regular membership of about 25 singers - is a chamber choir based in Clerkenwell, London. Focusing naturally on a capella repertoire and works accompanied by professional instrumental chamber groups and soloists, the choir's repertoire encompasses sacred music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods as well as music of the nineteenth century and the great secular works of the last 100 years.
St Stephen's Church in Gloucester Road will be the venue for CML's springtime concert this year, featuring a host of accomplished soloists and intrumentalists alongside the choir. Conductor Russell Du Plessis will lead a performance of Bach's St John Passion on 26 May, as part of the 2012 St Stephen's Festival. It will be CML's first performance of a large scale work by Bach since the Mass in B Minorwas presented by the choir at St James's Church, Piccadilly, in 2008.
Recorded in March 2009 at St Mary Abchurch, London, the CD features music from the Russian sacred repertoire, including pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Chesnokov and Glinka.
The choir is at present on the lookout for tenors and basses. And there's a special deal for the under 25s - rather than the usual subscription rates, pay just £10 per concert to sing with the choir.
Click here for details of our straightforward audition process, or email the choir Fixer here.
Choir for hire
Anyone for tenors?
Collegium Musicum of London is also available for hire – either to give a concert as part of a festival, to provide one-off concert programmes, or to sing for functions.