Bath Camerata

BATH CAMERATA was formed in 1986 by former King’s Singer Nigel Perrin and achieved immediate success by reaching the Finals of the Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year Competition. Since then, Bath Camerata has become the foremost chamber choir in the south-west of England and has continued to achieve great success and critical acclaim both at home and abroad.

The choir has won prizes in France, Italy and Ireland and, in 2002, won the Sainsbury’s/BBC TV Adult Choir of the Year at the Royal Albert Hall, in London. A concert tour in northern Italy the same year included a memorable concert to a capacity audience in the Basilica San Francesco in Assisi; this was followed the next year with two concerts in the Normandy Pollifollia Festival. In the summer of 2003 the choir were invited to perform with Messrs. Pavarotti, Domingo & Carerras in the Royal Crescent, Bath.

Bath Camerata have appeared in the Bath International Music Festival every year for the last sixteen years, performing repertoire ranging from mediaeval to contemporary. Featured composers have included Monteverdi, Rachmaninov, Nyman, Schnittke and Rautavaara. In 2004, Giles Swayne was commissioned and composed a setting of the Stabat Mater, which incorporated Hebrew and Arabic influences into the traditional latin text, while in the 2006 Festival an extended Bath Camerata gave two ‘sold-out’ performances of Tallis’ 40-part Motet Spem in alium in Bath Abbey, sharing the billing with Joanna McGreggor and Brian Eno, whose Music for Airports, scored for choir, piano and electronics, received its first live performance and broadcast.

The choir has sung with The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonietta in works by Handel, Mozart, Britten and MacMillan and more recently has performed Bach’s B minor Mass and St John Passion with authentic instruments in the Sherborne Abbey Festival. Bath Camerata’s discography ranges from two specialist CDs; one featuring the music of Robert Pearsall on the Meridian label and the other the music of Antonin Tucapsky on Somm.

To music, a CD of German romantic part-songs was chosen for Gramophone’s Critic’s Choice in 1999. The group shows another side of its versatility in the CD Light Fantastic, a collection of entertaining a cappella arrangements and a recording of Christmas music, Christmas a cappella released in 2004.

More photographs on the bookings page..