‘An undoubted jewel in Britain’s choral scene’ (BBC Music Magazine), the Choir of The Queen’s College Oxford is among the finest and most active university choirs in the UK. Its extensive concert schedule involves appearances across the UK and abroad, including work with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Britten Sinfonia, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. It regularly tours abroad, and concert tours have included China, Taiwan, the USA, Sri Lanka, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, France, the Low Countries, and Germany.
The choir’s wide-ranging repertory includes a rich array of Renaissance and Baroque music and contemporary works. The group broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio, and during the academic year it provides the music for regular services in the splendid Baroque chapel of The Queen’s College. Among its recordings on Signum Classics, Carols from Queen’s enjoyed nine weeks in the Specialist Classical Charts, was ‘Drive Feature Album of the Week’ on Classic FM, and was a Telegraph Christmas pick; A New Heaven and The House of the Mind both went straight to no. 1 in the Specialist Classical Chart in their first week of sales; and a recording of music by the great Tudor composer John Taverner, received a Diapason d’or and was described by Diapason as ‘a splendid triumph of English choral art at its best’. Queen’s Choir has also recorded for film in the famous Abbey Road Studios, and appears on the Grammy- nominated soundtrack of the Warner-Brothers film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

In 1992, Britten Sinfonia was established as a bold reimagining of the conventional image of an orchestra. A flexible ensemble comprising the UK’s leading soloists and chamber musicians came together with a unique vision: to collapse the boundaries between old and new music; to collaborate with composers, conductors and guest artists across the arts, focussing on the musicians rather than following the vision of a principal conductor; and to create involving, intelligent music events that both audiences and performers experience with an unusual intensity. The orchestra is named after Benjamin Britten, in part a homage to its chosen home of the East of England, where Britten’s roots were also strong. But Britten Sinfonia also embodies its namesake’s ethos. Its projects are illuminating and distinctive, characterised by their rich diversity of influences and artistic collaborators; and always underpinned by a commitment to uncompromising quality, whether the orchestra is performing in New York’s Lincoln Center or in Lincolnshire’s Crowland Abbey.
Britten Sinfonia musicians are deeply rooted in the communities with which they work, with an underlying philosophy of finding ways to reach even the most excluded individuals and groups. Today Britten Sinfonia is heralded as one of the world’s leading ensembles and its philosophy of adventure and reinvention has inspired a new movement of emerging chamber groups. It is an Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican, Resident Orchestra at Saffron Hall in Essex and has residencies in Norwich and Cambridge. It performs an annual chamber music series at London’s Wigmore Hall and appears regularly at major UK festivals including the Aldeburgh, Brighton, Norfolk and Norwich Festivals and the BBC Proms. The orchestra has performed a live broadcast to more than a million people worldwide from the Sistine Chapel, regularly tours internationally including to the US, South America, Asia and extensively in Europe. It is a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast Partner and has award-winning recordings on the Hyperion and Harmonia Mundi labels. Recent and current collaborators include Keaton Henson, dancer/choreographer Pam Tanowitz and theatre director Ivo van Hove, with commissions from Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Shiva Freshareki, Emily Howard, Brad Mehldau and Mark-Anthony Turnage.
The orchestra was a commissioning partner in a ground-breaking partnership between minimalist composer Steve Reich and visual artist Gerhard Richter in a new work that was premiered in October 2019. Outside the concert hall, Britten Sinfonia musicians work on creative and therapeutic projects with pre-school children, teenagers, young carers, people suffering from dementia, life-time prisoners and older people at risk of isolation. The orchestra’s OPUS competition offers unpublished composers the chance to receive a professional commission and unearths new, original and exciting UK compositional talent. Members of Britten Sinfonia Academy, the orchestra’s youth chamber ensemble for talented young performers, have performed in museums, improvised with laptop artists, led family workshops and appeared at Latitude Festival.

Owen Rees is both performer and scholar, his scholarship consistently informing his performances. Through his extensive work as a choral director, he has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works from Spain and Portugal. His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic and persuasive voices’ in this field. He has conducted at festivals worldwide, and is increasingly busy as a leader of workshops on performance of Renaissance polyphony. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and on Portuguese, Spanish, and Norwegian radio. He has released CD recordings on the Hyperion, Signum, and Avie labels to consistently high critical acclaim and his work has been shortlisted for the Gramophone Early Music Award.
Owen Rees began his academic and conducting career as Organ Scholar at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, studying with Peter le Huray and Iain Fenlon. After a period as College Lecturer in Music at St Peter’s College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he joined the Music Department at the University of Surrey, where he was promoted to the post of Reader. In 1997 he returned to Oxford, where—in addition to his posts of Fellow in Music at The Queen’s College and Director of Music of the Choir of The Queen's College—he is Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College and a Professor in the Faculty of Music. His numerous published studies include work on the Spanish composers Cristóbal de Morales and Francisco Guerrero and the English composer William Byrd.