A friendly and welcoming choir
South Bucks Choral Society was founded by our conductor, Iain Ledingham in 1980.
Over the years we have built up an excellent reputation for our many concerts, collaborating with the Amersham Festival Chamber Orchestra made up of high calibre, professional players and talented young soloists from the Royal Academy of Music.
Our Conductor
Our conductor, Iain, is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, working primarily with singers. He has been Director of Opera there and was musical director of the Academy’s prestigious and highly successful Bach Cantata series from 2009-2018.
Our Concert Repertoire
Our choir has performed many of the great choral oratorios by Handel, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Verdi etc as well as taking part in operas by Handel and Mozart. In 2019 we performed Mozart’s great opera Idomeneo with the amazing young tenor Freddie de Tommaso in the title role. He is now singing major roles at the Royal Opera House and throughout Europe.
Each year we perform two major concerts with orchestra, in November and April. In addition there is our popular Carol Concert in December and a Summer concert featuring opera choruses, folk songs and shorter choral works.
International Concerts
For nearly 20 years South Bucks Choral Society has visited the famous Cinque Terre, Liguria in North-West Italy. We have been warmly welcomed, performing in two summer Festivals. We have given concerts in the splendid Gothic churches in Monterosso al Mare and Levanto, attracting large and appreciative audiences. These concerts have coincided with the Royal Academy Summer School for singers learning Italian. Our musical director, Iain Ledingham provides these talented young singers with the opportunity to study and perform great Italian operatic music to Italian audiences. In addition our choir sings with the students in a popular outdoor concert of operatic Arias and choruses. Over many years our choral society has supported and encouraged this extremely worthwhile Italian learning project for Royal Academy singers.
The Italian Summer school led to us performing in Italy and the UK the premiere of Aldo Viviani’s ‘Domine refugium factus est’ (Lord thou hast been our refuge). This setting of Psalm 90 was a joy to learn and perform, full of beautiful, haunting melodies and a highly expressive setting of the text. Aldo Viviani is a well-known choral conductor in Liguria and has invited South Bucks Choral Society to sing on many occasions in the annual festival of concerts which he organises there in the summer. We were delighted that Aldo and his wife came to hear us rehearse and perform this work in the chapel of the Royal Masonic School in Rickmansworth. The performance made quite an impression and the composer received a standing ovation at the end.
In 2018 we undertook an exchange with the Polish Harmonia Choir from Mikołów, Poland. A group from our choir visited Mikołów to sing with them and they made a return visit to the UK to sing with us. The UK joint concert was held at St James Church, Gerrards Cross. It was greatly enjoyed by all those who participated in it.
We are currently exploring options for other foreign exchanges in the future.
