University of Birmingham Voices shortlisted for the Gramophone Magazine Classical Music Awards 2024
The University of Birmingham Voices recording of Stanford’s Requiem has been shortlisted for the Gramophone Magazine Classical Music Awards 2024.
Recorded in July 2022 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor, Martyn Brabbins at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the recording marked a milestone for singing at the University with its release.
The live recording of their performance of Charles Villiers Stanford’s forgotten late-Victorian masterpiece marked 125 years since the premiere of the work at the Birmingham Triennial Festival and featured a number of international soloists alongside Brabbins – including Carolyn Sampson and Marta Fontanals-Simmons (both Birmingham alumni), with James Way and Ross Ramgobin.
Category winners for the prestigious awards will be announced later this year.
University of Birmingham Voices have – in recent years – enjoyed a number of critically acclaimed programmes with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, including a concert production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard in 2017, as well as a celebrated joint performance with CBSO Chorus of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast in 2019. In 2020, the choir marked the centenary year of the CBSO with a massed performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”) alongside CBSO Chorus and Baltimore Choral Arts, and – most recently in June 2024 – joined forces again with the CBSO Chorus for the UK premiere of John Luther Adams’ Vespers of the Blessed Earth.