Looking for a choir to join?

Maybe you've just moved into the Oxford area, or perhaps you sang in your youth, stopped, and now you're thinking about singing again.  The big question is how do you find your dream choir? The first step is probably to clearly identify what you're looking for before you start trying to identify potential choirs to join.

• What sort of repertoire do you want to sing - 'mainstream' large choral works, smaller scale chamber works, contemporary music, gospel or church music, a capella, barbershop or other 'niche' music?
• What size of choir would you be comfortable singing in, and would you prefer a mixed voice choir or a single gender choir? 
• Do you want to be involved in serious concert performances or are you just after a chance to sing along with a few mates for your own pleasure (i.e. a social organisation as much as a musical one)?
• What is your level of musical ability (probably somewhere between 'can hold a tune, but can't read music' to 'excellent sight reader and trained musician')?
• What level of musicianship would you expect from your fellow choir members and other performers involved in concerts?
• Is the location for rehearsals and concerts important or are you able to travel across a wide area?
• What level of commitment are you willing to put in in terms of time, effort and money?

That's probably enough to be thinking about at this stage. So when you've got all of your answers to the above questions sorted out in your head what comes next?

Well the good news is that there are dozens of choirs in the Oxford area and lots of information about them easily available on the internet and elsewhere. The bad news is that it can be difficult trying to narrow it down to the right choir for you personally.

Let's start with a few examples where your requirements would automatically narrow down the choice considerably :

• If you're connected to a particular educational establishment such as Oxford University or Brookes University and want to stick to an in house choir you can easily find a number of options from their Music Department. If they don't suit you then you can widen your search to look outside.
• Likewise choirs connected to specific churches can easily be identified by contacting them direct.
• Specialist choirs are also usually relatively easy to track down by a simple Google search leading to a limited number of options (for example searching for 'Oxford Welsh Male Voice Choir' or 'Oxford Gospel Choir' will lead directly to choirs with exactly those names).
• If a specific location is the prime concern then a Google search for the 'place name' & 'choir' should tell you what's available. Further information might also be available fom Parish websites and magazines. These may be the only methods of tracking down small local choirs with a high social content to their activities who put on less formal concerts, or community choirs who only perform locally.

If the above examples don't cover what you're looking for it probably means that you're after a more 'serious' choir performing mainstream classical choral works in central Oxford venues. These organisations can usually be classified either as a smaller chamber choir (50 or less singers, often performing a capella or with a small number of musicians, and requiring a high level of musicianship) or a large scale choral society (often 100 or more singers performing large scale choral works with orchestral accompaniment). These two types of choirs often have their own websites, but can most easily be tracked down through other websites that include 'choir finder' facilities such as 'Gerontius' or 'Making Music'. There is a strong crossover between the choirs listed on both these websites but they list them in different ways. Gerontius allows selection by type of choir and size as well as location whereas Making Music lists choirs solely in terms of their proximity to a location.

So now you've got a list of 'serious mainstream mixed voice choirs' sitting in front of you, which ones are worth a look at in more detail by going onto the choir's own websites? If it's a chamber choir you're after I would point you towards choirs like Commotio or Jubilate for a mixture of everything from early to contemporary music. As for the larger choirs it has to be the two longest established organisations, namely the Oxford Bach Choir and Oxford Harmonic Society. Both perform a wide range of large scale works, from the well known (Handel's Messiah, Verdi's Requiem and the like) to pieces by lesser known composers such as Caldara or Loewe, and both use professional soloists and orchestras. The Bach Choir has a longer and possibly slightly more prestigious history, but Oxford Harmonic Society isn't far behind, with a reasonably impressive 90 years of music making behind them. The other main difference between these two choirs? Well, subscriptions for Oxford Harmonic Society are currently £99 p.a., but the Bach Choir cost a hefty £180!

That's it. Now it's up to you to do the searching, find the choir of your dreams, and, most importantly, start singing.