The Choir of King’s College London, The Strand Ensemble & Joseph Fort
Biography The Choir of King’s College London, The Strand Ensemble & Joseph Fort
The Choir of King’s College London
is one of the leading university choirs in England, and has existed since its founding by William Henry Monk in the middle of the nineteenth century. The choir today consists of some thirty choral scholars reading a variety of subjects. The choir’s principal role at King’s is to provide music for chapel worship, with weekly Eucharist and Evensong offered during term, as well as various other services. Services from the chapel are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio. The choir also frequently sings for worship outside the university, including at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
In addition, the choir gives many concert performances. Recent festival appearances in England include the Barnes Music Festival, London Handel Festival, Oundle International Festival, St Albans International Organ Festival, Spitalfields Festival, and the Christmas and Holy Week Festivals at St. John’s Smith Square. In 2017 the choir joined forces with Britten Sinfonia to give the UK premiere of Samuel Barber’s The Lovers (Chamber Version) at Kings Place, the performance described in The Times as ‘sung beautifully, the voices judiciously blended’. The choir tours widely, with recent destinations including Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Nigeria and the USA. In 2017 it served as choir-in-residence for the northeast convention of American Guild of Organists and Royal Canadian College of Organists in Montreal.
The choir has made many recordings, and enjoys an ongoing relationship with Delphian Records. Recent recordings include the German Requiem of Johannes Brahms in its 1872 English-language setting, praised as ‘utterly uplifting’ (Norman Lebrecht, La Scena Musicale), ‘an intimate, highly charged performance’ (Stephen Pritchard, The Observer), and the Masses for Double Choir by Kenneth Leighton and Frank Martin, described as ‘a performance of astonishing intensity and musicality’ (Marc Rochester, Gramophone), and ‘a colourful performance . . . Joseph Fort’s superbly drilled Choir of King’s College London singing with shedloads of oomph’ (Graham Rickson, theartsdesk.com). Future releases include Gustav Holst’s The Cloud Messenger, in a new chamber version by Joseph Fort.
Following some twenty years under the leadership of David Trendell, the choir has been directed since 2015 by Joseph Fort.
Joseph Fort is the College Organist & Director of the Chapel Choir and Lecturer in Music at King’s College London.
Previously, he completed his PhD at Harvard University, and is active as a Conductor and Musicologist.
Joseph is responsible for Chapel music at King’s, conducting the choir in the weekly Eucharist and Evensong services during term.
Joseph Fort
He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and on US radio. His conducting debut with Britten Sinfonia in 2017 was met with acclaim from The Times, and his recording of the Brahms Requiem (London Version) released the same year on Delphian Records was praised as ‘an intimate, highly charged performance’ (Stephen Pritchard, The Observer) and ‘utterly uplifting’ (Norman Lebrecht, La Scena Musicale). A CD of the Double Masses of Leighton and Martin was described in Gramophone Magazine as ‘a performance of astonishing intensity and musicality . . . Joseph Fort is clearly in his element with this music and drives his singers onward with an almost hypnotic zeal’.
Festival conducting appearances across the world include the Festival de México, the White Nights Festival of St. Petersburg, the Montreal Organ Festival, the London Handel Festival, the St Albans International Organ Festival and the conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. In demand as a chorus master, he has assisted John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington, and enjoys a long and warm association with the Cambridge University Symphony Chorus, working with the choir in several seasons. During his time in America, Joseph conducted several choirs in the Boston area, and served for several years as the Resident Conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Joseph’s research focuses on eighteenth-century music and dance, and he is currently completing a monograph on Haydn and minuets. He has published in the Eighteenth-Century Music journal, and has chapters in books with Cambridge University Press and Leipzig University Press. He has given papers at numerous conferences, and recently featured on a panel for the Mozart Society of America entitled ‘The Future of Mozart Studies’. In November 2017 he returned to Harvard as Artist-In-Residence with the Harvard Choruses. A dedicated teacher, Joseph lectures on a variety of topics at King’s, and regularly gives talks for music societies and festivals. In 2018 his teaching was recognised with the Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Prior to Harvard, he studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the organ scholar, and at the Royal Academy of Music, who in 2017 elected him to their Associateship.
