About the BCF

Foundation

The Brentwood Choirs Festival was founded in 1991 as The Five Choirs Festival, on the initiative of David Taylor and Joyce Norris of Billericay Choral Society. As their conductor, David had collaborated at various times with Brentwood Cathedral Singers, Brentwood Choral Society, Ingatestone Choral Society and with the Brentwood School Choir. Joyce Norris took on the organisation of a Festival involving all these singers and continued to cast her organisational spell over it for the next ten years. The works have usually been chosen to enable individual choirs to sing works which they might find impossible by themselves.

The Festival was planned to take place biennially in November, to be conducted in turn by the conductors of the individual choirs. From the beginning it was possible to take advantage of the rebuilding of Brentwood Cathedral , finished by May 1991, and of its splendid new organ. Because the Five Choirs title was found to be somewhat limiting, it was changed in 2005 to the Brentwood Choirs Festival with the same aims and ambitions. The following paragraphs give the history of the Festival, showing that it has taken a central place in choral music making in Brentwood and in the surrounding area.

David Taylor, pictured left, has continued his association with the Festival and is currently its Chairman.

Participating Choirs

The following list gives the names of choirs which have taken part in the Brentwood Choirs Festival since 1991 From this list it can be seen that, for various reasons, not all choirs have been able to take part in every Festival. The choirs listed have performed in every festival within the indicated range of years Some choirs have the same conductors as in 1991, others have changed.

We were pleased to welcome choirs from local Primary Schools in 2007 and from Brentwood Preparatory School and the Brentwood Cathedral Girls Choir in 2009

Works Performed

The works performed in the years 1991 to 2011 are listed in the following table together with the conductor for the event. In some cases two or three conductors have shared the performance.