History

Uxbridge Choral Society grew out of a choir created in 1939 from the churches of Uxbridge for a united carol concert - its purpose to raise funds for the Uxbridge branch of the British Red Cross. A 77-voice choir conducted by Harold Stoddart (the Organist at St Margaret’s Uxbridge) performed on Christmas Eve in the old Methodist Central Hall. There was enthusiastic support for continuing the choir and at Easter 1940, Handel’s Messiah was performed.  

In the years since then, we have had 11 more conductors including our current conductor Tim Armstrong-Taylor. The choir has met in a variety of venues but is now back in our original home at St Margaret’s church Uxbridge. For many years the choir was run as an evening class but since 1995 has been a registered charity. Membership numbers have ranged from around 30 singers to a peak of 90 during the 2000s. Post-Covid we were delighted that around 35 members returned for rehearsals in the Autumn.

We are proud to be an open access choir requiring no audition. We have a wide spread of skills, from good sight readers with an excellent musical knowledge to those who are new to choral singing or have had a long gap away. We are happy to accept singers who have a love of music, can sing in tune and will commit themselves to regular attendance at rehearsals. We look to provide a challenging choir for all, but also emphasising fun and friendship.  

We perform four concerts per year across the full range of the western classical choral repertoire, including some lighter, popular music in the summer and Christmas carols in December. Our main performance venues currently are St Margaret’s  and St Andrew's churches in Uxbridge and St Anselm's in  Hayes. 

The choir is keen to support local events and has taken part in the switching on of the Christmas lights in Uxbridge, and Christmas Fayres at St Andrew’s Primary School and Uxbridge Business Park.

Some high points of the last 25 years

Looking a little further back into our history, we have been very fortunate in having ambitious conductors not afraid to challenge us with unusual, unfamiliar and difficult repertoire! In 1998 Anthony Goodchild persuaded us to attempt Fanshawe’s iconic African Sanctus to great acclaim and in 2003 arranged a quartet of soloists to fly in from Rome for a spectacular performance of the Verdi Requiem.

With Iain Ledingham from 2004 - 2009 we performed the less well-known Duruflé Requiem, Dvořák’s Mass in D and Handel’s oratorio Samson, all very rewarding and well received by the audience.

With Jeff Stewart in 2011 we sang a world amateur premier of Sir John Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem and in the same concert performed music from the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This proved to be a sell-out concert at St Anselm’s Hayes where we ran out of chairs. In the same church in 2013 we sang Rachmaninov’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom - all in Russian!  Some Ukrainian audience members remarked that our pronunciation was very good although I don’t think our Russian tenor soloist was so convinced!

More recently with Tim Armstrong-Taylor in 2018 we sang Karl Jenkins The Armed Man with a young man from the Hayes Muslim centre singing the Call to Prayer. In the same concert we sang the fiendishly hard Handel’s Dixit Dominus which is known to make some professionals go weak at the knees. Tim was determined we would ‘crack it’ and called extra rehearsals which most people attended.!  Other concerts have included Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle, Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols, a selection from The Great American Songbook, Eric Whitacre, Animal Crackers, Faure Requiem and Brahms German Requiem.

Challenges of Covid

In common with all other choirs, in 2020 Covid put a stop to our singing together, but Tim did a great job of keeping us motivated by running weekly Zoom sessions. We were delighted to finally get back together in Autumn 2021 and begin concerts again in 2022 with Mozart Requiem and Handel Messiah.

Our membership has halved since Covid but our enthusiasm remains high. We have done some wonderful music in 2023  which can be  listened to here:  Recordings