The Choir and  its  Mission

Shrewsbury School Community Choir has over 100 active members and was formed over 40 years ago. Its activities are also registered as Shropshire Charity Concerts.  We are based in Shrewsbury and have access to unrivalled music facilities at Shrewsbury School for rehearsals, committee meetings and concerts (through the kind permission of the Headmaster).  The School's Head of Choral Music, Richard Robbins, is also our Music Director and we are supported by the Shrewsbury School Music Department;

We are a friendly, non-auditioning choir aiming to perform a wide range of classical and contemporary choral works to a high standard.

We give up to four concerts each year, including Handel's Messiah in December in Shrewsbury Abbey to raise money for local and national good causes

We aim to advance the study and practice of choral and other music and performing arts, to provide opportunities for high-quality performances for our members and a wide range of other musicians, and through them to foster the musical education and enjoyment of the public. Our annual charity performances of Handel's Messiah in Shrewsbury Abbey provide significant support for worthy local causes.

Our Constitution may be found in the Documents section here

We sing regularly at other venues in Shrewsbury and Shropshire and occasionally form smaller choruses to perform at specific events.

The Community Choir has also sung in Birmingham and in both Lichfield and Liverpool Cathedrals, including our fourth appearance in Birmingham’s magnificent Town Hall for a performance of the Verdi Requiem. Individual members of our choir also sing informally in a variety of other groups in Shropshire and beyond including, periodically, larger choral ensembles singing with professional musicians and conductors at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall with the CBSO and other orchestras.

The Community Choir performs, in addition to long-established classics, choral works of living composers such as Bob Chilcott, Eriks Esenvalds, John Rutter, Paul Patterson, Karl Jenkins, Alexander L'Estrange, John Moore, and compositions by Shrewsbury School students.  On a lighter note we have given separate concert performances of Alexander L'Estrange's jazz cantatas Zimbe! and Ahoy!, concerts of light classical and popular choruses, summer concerts of a cappella pieces and concert opera performances of Bizet's Carmen and Verdi's Nabucco and Aïda, the latter two with the Shrewsbury Symphony Orchestra.

From the 1990s to 2018, elements of the Community Choir formed the English Haydn Festival Chorus and the Shrewsbury Festival Chorus. Both ensembles developed a wide reputation for high-quality performances of major classical choral works, partnering professional musicians and international soloists such as Willard White, Catherine Bott, Daniel Norman and Emma Kirkby.   These festivals saw us perform most of Haydn’s Masses, his Creation and  Seasons oratorios, and choral works of other composers, including Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn, specialising in the inclusion of their less-frequently heard works.

Please see here a list of concerts we have performed since November 1982. 

You can also see some reviews of our past concerts here and listen to a short extract from our performance of Handel's Messiah in Shrewsbury Abbey here

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