University of Birmingham Voices

University of Birmingham Voices is formed each year for an annual performance alongside the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Symphony Hall. This symphonic choir is a chorus of approximately 120 students, including singers from Birmingham University Singers, University Upper Voices, University Camerata, and University Vocal Consort.

Performances to date have included an Opera Choruses Gala (2015), a revue show of the music of Rodgers & Hammerstein (2016), and a critically acclaimed concert production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard (2017).

The choir enjoy a strong relationship with the CBSO Chorus, and have collaborated with the choir in massed performances of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with John Wilson (2019), Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”) with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (2020), and Orff’s Carmina Burana (2023). Notably, the choir performed and recorded Stanford’s Requiem with the orchestra and Martyn Brabbins for Hyperion, marking 125 years since its commission by the Birmingham Triennial Festival in 2022.

University of Birmingham Voices remain in high demand and – alongside other vocal ensembles at the university – have returned to perform at the BBC Proms on a number of occasions.

Highlights include three performances of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Sir Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic in Birmingham, London, and Lucerne, as well as a performance of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Marin Alsop at the penultimate night of the festival in 2016. In 2017, the choir opened the Proms season with BBC Proms Youth Choir and Edward Gardner in a live televised performance of John Adams’s Harmonium.