About the North Herts Guild of Singers

Welcome to the website of The North Herts Guild of Singers. We are a community choir based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire with members living in Hertfordshire and the neighbouring counties of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. We are one of the best-known and best-supported choral groups in the area with a membership of about 150 singers and an ever-growing reputation for high standards of music making. We have a wide repertoire, ranging from the major choral works through to popular oratorio and to smaller, less familiar works.

We are a non-auditioning choir and although our members have different levels of choral experience we all share a common love of choral singing. We rehearse on Thursday evenings at the Benslow Music Trust in Hitchin under the direction of Stephen Bullamore who, like our répétiteur, is a professional musician keen on developing and maintaining the high musical standards we set ourselves.

We perform at least four concerts each year and sometimes more. In 2011, for example, we will be giving seven concerts, two of which will be in Burgundy as part of our choir tour there later in the year. 

As you will see under previous concerts, we have performed many of the major choral works over the past few years together with programmes of lighter music appropriate to the type of concert we are giving. In 2010 we performed Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers with the period-instrument ensembles Musica Donum Dei and Quintessential in celebration of the 400th anniversary of this work, followed by a performance of Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man. In the autumn of 2010 we gave a charity performance of Messiah, which raised £1650 for our local Hospice. All three of these concerts were performed to capacity audiences, demonstrating the popularity of the choir within the local community. So far in 2011 we have given a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor, again with Musica Donum Dei, and this was followed by a Summer Concert of favourites from Gilbert & Sullivan with Richard Suart as the bariotone soloist.

If you would like to join us please check the relevant web pages for details and if you would like to be kept informed about our future concerts please send us your email address via the form on the Home page.

We hope you enjoy this website and it inspires you to start singing.