Bob Chilcott has been involved in choral music most of his life—he was a chorister in the choir of King’s College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks, and later returned to King’s as a Choral Scholar. Between 1985 and 1997 he was a member of The King’s Singers.
Since 1997, Bob has poured his energy into choral composition, conducting, and promoting choral singing throughout the world. He is well known for his compositions for children’s choir, including his piece Can you hear me? which he has conducted in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, and the Czech Republic. He is also associated with the New Orleans Children’s Chorus and the Crescent City Festival in New Orleans, for whom he has written five pieces including Little Jazz Mass, Happy Land and Be Simple Little Children. 2008 saw the release of the CD Making Waves in which the upper-voice group The Sirens perform a selection of exquisite shorter pieces including This Day and A Little Jazz Mass.
Of his larger works, The Making of the Drum, a cantata for choir and percussion, has been extensively performed and features on two recordings: on an album (with the same title) of his music for mixed choir performed by the Finnish Choir Grex Musicus conducted by Marjukka Riihimaki, and on a BBC Singers’ disc from 2007 devoted to his music, Man I Sing (on the Signum label). His two larger sacred works, Jubilate and Canticles of Light have also been performed extensively, Jubilate being included in a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall in November 2005. 2008 was devoted to the composition of the Salisbury Vespers, (premièred in Salisbury.
As a conductor Bob has worked extensively with choirs and festivals throughout the world. For seven years he was conductor of the chorus at the Royal College of Music in London. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers, with whom he works regularly in studio recordings and concerts, and he has also guest conducted the RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin, and the Elmer Iseler Singers in Toronto. In 2003 he was the first non-American conductor to conduct a National Honor Choir for the American Choral Directors Association (in New York City). He has been a featured conductor for Europa Cantat in Sweden, Germany and Belgium, and was the first foreign conductor to conduct at the Song Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2008 he conducted at the World Youth Choir Festival in Singapore, and in 2009 made a return visit to Japan.
Bob Chilcott is available as a guest conductor and clinician for workshops world-wide. His music is published by Oxford University Press. www.bobchilcott.com
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