Pegasus is one of London’s leading chamber choirs, devoting most of its time to concerts for music societies and charities. The choir were semi-finalists in the BBC Choir of the Year competition in 2005, and in November 2007 won bronze in the vocal groups category at the Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain. Television and radio work includes Radio 3, Radio 4, Classic FM, and the Channel 4 premiere of Jonathan Dove’s opera “When She Died” - about Princess Diana.
Upcoming events
Saturday 11 October - Mozart Mass in C Minor & launch of Pegasus Christmas CD
Serenade to Music - “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank”
PEGASUS
LONDON BACH PLAYERS
Conductor: Matthew Altham
MOZART: Mass in C Minor
HANDEL: Zadok the Priest
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Serenade to Music
LAURIDSEN: O Magnum Mysterium
(from our forthcoming CD)
Full details are available here (PDF)
Saturday 6 December - Friends of Shakespeare’s Globe Carols
Saturday 13 December - Princess Alice Hospice Carols
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The group rehearses at the Hawksmoor church of St. Mary, Woolnoth in the City, and has sung in many prestigious venues in the capital, including the Almeida Theatre, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Lambeth Palace, with a variety of celebrities ranging from Prunella Scales and Sebastian Coe to Michael Ball and the Duchess of Gloucester.
The choir’s repertoire is very extensive, ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, in languages, from Czech to Quechua! The choir has sung major sacred works including the Monteverdi and Rachmaninov Vespers, Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. John and St. Matthew Passions, Vivaldi’s Gloria, settings of the Requiem mass by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré and Duruflé, Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Utrecht Te Deum, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Roxanna Panufnik’s Westminster Mass, and other mass settings by Palestrina, Berkeley, Kodaly, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Rheinberger, Rubbra and Ramirez.
Pegasus is committed to exploring contemporary music, and has premiered works by leading British composers, including John Tavener and Thomas Ades. The group also sings a wide range of secular repertoire, from opera choruses to folk-songs and jazz.
Pegasus has worked with a number of professional orchestras and conductors, including the Southbank Sinfonia, under the direction of John Rutter, and the London Handel Players, under the direction of Laurence Cummings, and has been invited to take part in various prestigious music festivals, including the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, the Tilford Bach Festival and the Proms at St. Jude’s.
The choir also presents many concerts to raise funds for a range of charities, and has worked in partnership with Cancer Research UK, Shakespeare’s Globe, Tearfund, Princess Alice Hospice, Handel House, Crisis and the Florence Nightingale Museum.
Pegasus is unusual amongst choirs in that it does not hold auditions or regular weekly rehearsals. New members are introduced by existing members, and specific rehearsal time is set aside for the individual projects the choir is working on. These flexible arrangements suit the choir’s members, who have hectic and successful careers (as lawyers, doctors, teachers and fundraisers, in publishing and the Media, IT, the charity sector and the Arts, but wish to keep up their active music-making.