Our choir of 80 singers has a proud history of exciting and innovative choral concerts and performances over the last 30 years in venues in and around the Exeter area and the southwest. We also have established links with partner choirs in Germany and France.

The choir continues to develop and flourish under our inspirational Musical Director, Andrea Brown, singing a broad repertoire from early music to contemporary and jazz in regular collaboration with other choirs and with professional musicians, both instrumental and vocal. Members of the choir also audition for solo and semi-chorus roles and the degree of accomplishment can be seen in the EFC concert reviews

“The choir sang with a sparkle in their eyes and joy in their voices singing a demanding programme of highly varied styles and textures”

“The choir not only rose to the musical, technical and physical challenges of the piece, but from beginning to end demonstrated their ability to create different moods and hold the audience in the grip of their performance.”

Full details of the current season’s programmes can be seen as they become known in the What’s On section.

EFC has a reputation as a welcoming and friendly choir as can be discovered here:

Exeter Festival Chorus – A Personal Account 

“Simplicity, power, richness, warmth, splendour, space and stillness were all present in tonight’s performance” – review of ‘Northern Lights’ concert, December 2023.

About the Choir:
Established over 30 years ago to support Exeter’s then thriving music festival, Exeter Festival Chorus (EFC) now has around 80 mixed voices with a comprehensive and varied year-round concert programme. We are still based in Exeter with its cathedral at our heart but also perform in a variety of venues across the South West region of UK.  Further afield, we maintain good links with our partner choirs in Germany and France.
Members audition to be accepted into EFC and endure the re-audition process every 3 years thereafter to maintain the highest quality of vocal sound. Once you’re in, we are friendly and welcoming – some visiting a local hostelry after the hard work of rehearsing – and the person you sit next to on your first evening may become your friend for life; as happened to me. That was 22 years ago now and I’ve experienced EFC develop and grow over all this time. 

What We Do:
We have a proud history of exciting and innovative choral concerts; from early music to contemporary and jazz and have commissioned works of our own. We are fortunate to have a local composer associated with the choir (a previous member) whose music we have premiered in the South West. We work alongside a variety of professional orchestras, from the nationally acclaimed Devon Baroque and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras to the Band of HM Royal Marines and the Will Todd Jazz Trio. We employ professional soloists and have worked with international baritone Roderick Williams OBE, soprano Lesley Garrett, the vocal ensemble Voces8 and composer Karl Jenkins. We have links with various colleges of music and utilise young and developing soloists as well as those who are already established in their careers.
In smaller concerts we encourage members to audition for solo and semi-chorus parts, bringing on talent from within our own body of accomplished singers. On a weekly basis we benefit from the vocal coaching of our Musical Director (MD), Andrea Brown, herself a professional soprano previously, honing our vocal technique and performance skills in order to deliver our ever-demanding repertoires. 
We do not fear the dramatic; performing semi-staged works as diverse as Bach’s St John’s Passion and The Wind in the Willows. Some members recently joined with English Touring Opera in Handel’s Julius Caesar and also with Cuban dancer, Carlos Acosta, for his ‘On Before’ tour. A few of us were invited to record our National Anthem for the Queen’s television Christmas message. The performance of our commissioned work, Eternal Voices, with Sir Trevor Macdonald as the narrator, was featured on BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Choir’ programme with Aled Jones. Versatility is our watchword!
“Ambition and imagination have long been features of EFC… and this evening was no exception” – concert review, December 2021.

Our Musical Director and Committee:
All this does not happen by chance and we could not achieve what we do without our phenomenal MD, Andrea Brown. Andrea is head of choral conducting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama but has many other strings to her bow. She is a passionate advocate for music education and her enthusiasm in developing EFC has fed into our vision of diversity, outreach to our community, nurturing of new talent and environmental sustainability.
We are also very fortunate to have an energetic and capable committee managing the delivery of that vision.  
“The choir’s love of singing was clearly communicated to everyone and the conductor Andrea Brown’s encouraging conducting and ability to draw out a fine array of colours alongside precision and vivacity were a joy to listen to” – concert review, April 2022.

Our Successes:
In 2005 we co-ordinated a tripartite collaboration between Exeter and its linked city choirs of Yaroslavl (Russia) and Hanau (Germany). The choirs combined to perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in all three locations with soloists from each of the three countries on every occasion.
We have recorded a CD of beautiful Christmas music (copies available) and have won the large choir category of Devon’s Performing Arts Festival on several occasions. We do not shy away from a challenge. Speaking of which ….

Our Challenges:
Like all choirs, we were sideswiped by the arrival of COVID in 2020 and all the restrictions for performers that went with it. However, unperturbed, we continued with online rehearsals and produced our own ‘virtual choir’ recordings, in this way maintaining our personal connections and wellbeing. When our MD at the time, Nigel Perrin, retired we ran a highly successful series of masterclasses from invited guests until we were in a position to appoint a new MD. These included; a talk from baritone Roderick Williams OBE on his life and career and his thoughts on an international career in balance with the challenges of climate change, a tutorial around choral jazz from the composer, conductor, performer and professor of jazz Scott Stroman, as well as more practical sessions about the physiology of singing, techniques for overcoming common problems and how to prepare the body and voice to work together in singing well.
These sessions not only kept us together whilst protecting us throughout the pandemic but also developed our understanding of choral music in the broadest sense.

Our Vision Going Forward:
We all love singing and delivering an exciting programme but that is not enough. Our vision is to reach out to the community and to nurture those that respond. We run regular open rehearsals and an annual choral workshop which are open to the public, and collaborate with other local choirs, choristers and young people’s musical groups. We are currently organising an ambitious project called New Creation which, in partnership with Devon Education Music Hub, will involve children from less affluent schools joining us in song, dance and narration to explore the importance of nature conservation. 
In addition, this will be the inaugural year of our scholarship programme, aimed at developing our relationship with the musical community of Exeter University. Students will be offered the opportunity to develop their singing and conducting skills through tuition from our MD Andrea. They will be an integral part of the choir and will be involved in putting on events designed to attract younger singers and audiences alike. In return, they will be offered solos in performances and be remunerated up to an agreed sum. 
A central theme underpinning our vision is environmental sustainability and we are in the process of producing a sustainability policy for the choir.  Meanwhile, we have taken this issue to heart and our desire now is to deal with it in the best way we know how – through music. In this way, we look forward to continuing our musical adventure together towards a brighter future.
 
Tam Jackson, Vice Chair.

In addition to our performances we are developing community outreach activities, supporting fundraising events and taking us to new audiences (young and old), both as a whole choir and in smaller ensembles. For our singers and audiences alike, EFC looks forward to continuing our musical adventures into an even brighter future.