| Bath Bach Choir | |
|---|---|
| Choir | |
| Origin | Bath, Somerset, England |
| Founded | October 1946 |
| Members | about 100 |
| Music director | Benedict Collins Rice |
| Website | www |
Bath Bach Choir, formerly The City of Bath Bach Choir (CBBC), is based in Bath, Somerset, England, and is a registered charity.[1] Founded in 1946 by Cuthbert Bates, who also became a founding father of the Bath Bach Festival[2] in 1950, the choir's original aim was to promote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach via periodic music festivals. Bates – an amateur musician with a great love and understanding of this composer's works – was also the CBBC's principal conductor and continued in this role until his sudden death, in April 1980. This untimely exit pre-empted his planned retirement concert performance of J. S. Bach's Mass in B minor,[3][2] scheduled for July of the same year, and effectively ended the first period of the choir's history.
Distinguished Handel scholar[4] Denys Darlow succeeded Cuthbert Bates as musical director in 1980 and remained in the post until 1990. He was followed by Nigel Perrin, who remained Musical Director until December 2022. Perrin began his musical life as a chorister at Ely Cathedral, then won a choral scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, studying under Sir David Willcocks. In 1970 he also joined the newly formed King's Singers, having sung with them on an occasional basis after graduation in the summer of 1969, and thereafter entertaining the world throughout the 1970s as the highest voice (counter-tenor) of the irrepressible and ground-breaking vocal group.
In 2023, Benedict Collins Rice was appointed music director, only the fourth in 75 years. Originally from Oxfordshire, Collins Rice held two conducting scholarships at the University of Cambridge before continuing his studies with the Heads of Conducting at the Royal College of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the University of Birmingham where he studied under Simon Halsey. Performing throughout Europe and the US, he has recorded for several labels,[5] broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and founded a chamber group, The Facade Ensemble.[6]
The first president of the CBBC was Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams until 1958. Sir Arthur Bliss, then Master of the Queen's Music (Musik), took over as president in 1959, followed in 1975 by Sir David Willcocks, until 2015. In 2016 David Hill, musical director of The Bach Choir, was elected president of Bath Bach Choir, and Jonathan Willcocks a vice president.