The Choir of Royal Holloway, David Goode. Onyx Brass & Rupert Gough
Biography The Choir of Royal Holloway, David Goode. Onyx Brass & Rupert Gough
David Goode
is one of the UK’s leading organists, with a diverse portfolio of concerts, teaching and composition.
He was a music scholar at Eton College and then organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge from 1991-4, graduating with a first and the MPhil degree. He studied the organ with David Sanger and in Holland with Jacques van Oortmerssen. From 1996-2001 he was Sub-Organist at Christ Church, Oxford; and after winning the top prizes awarded at the 1997 St Alban’s Interpretation Competition, and the Recital Gold Medal at the 1998 Calgary Competition, he concentrated on a freelance career between 2001 and 2003. From 2003-2005, he combined this with the post of Organist-in-Residence at First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, home to the world’s largest church organ; and from 2005-2022 he was Organist at Eton College, where he taught many of the UK’s most talented young organists.
In 1999 he made the first of many appearances at the BBC Proms: he gave a solo recital in 2006 and was a Featured Artist in 2011. In 2002 he made his RFH and Symphony Hall debuts, and has played at both several times. He has toured widely in Europe, North America, Australia and the Far East, and has forged a strong link in the UK with the BBCNOW and the BBC Singers. He also has a partnership with trumpeter Alison Balsom; concerts include the Moscow Arts, Passau Festivals, and the Organ Gala Launch at the Royal Festival Hall in March 2014. In 2016, he performed at the National Convention of the AGO, and has returned to the US twice since then. More recent concerts have included Freiberg Dom in Germany, the Beaminster Festival and St John’s, Smith Square, as well as a recording of works by John Pickard for BIS; concerts in 2023 include visits to Dublin and Scotland, a Bach lecture-recital in Marlow, and a recording of Mozart’s organ works for Signum.
He has long been in demand as a teacher, and was on the jury for the St Albans International Organ Festival in 2017. In recent years he has composed a number of choral and organ works, including a collaboration with the poet Francis Warner; performances include those by the choirs of King’s and St. John’s Colleges, Cambridge. In September 2013 the Bach Choir and RPO under David Hill gave the premiere of his Blitz Requiem in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and his anthem, Holy is the true light, was premiered in July 2022.His Violin Sonata will be premiered in July 2023.
Since his first solo CD, ‘French Showpieces from King’s’ in 1994, his recordings have consistently received critical acclaim. Of his 2004 release from Los Angeles, ‘The Great Organs of First Church vol. 2’, The American Organist said ‘David Goode shows a fearless command of one of the world’s largest church organs.’ 2004 also saw the first release of works by Max Reger (‘Finally, there’s a set…that competes with Germani’s 1960’s HMV recordings – I thought the day would never come’, Choir and Organ); further sets appeared in 2013 and 2015. His recording of the complete organ works of Bach from Trinity College, Cambridge was released on the Signum label in 2019, followed by live broadcasts of Bach on BBC Radio 3 from Oxford and Cambridge. Gramophone said: ‘David Goode continues to delight and edify in equal measure …. this series is notable for the flair, clarity and spontaneity that Goode brings to this timeless music’. His account of the Orgelbüchlein was rated as ‘Best Recording’ of the piece by Classical Music magazine.
Rupert Gough
has been Director of Choral Music and College Organist at Royal Holloway, University of London since 2005. He is also Organist and Director of Music at London’s oldest surviving church, Saint Bartholomew the Great, which maintains a professional choir. At Royal Holloway Rupert has developed the choral programme to include weekly choral recitals, choral conducting courses for undergraduates, frequent new choral commissions and transformed the Chapel Choir into an elite group of 24 choral scholars. The Choir has particularly come to prominence through their series of recordings for Hyperion Records. Their recent recording of the music of Ola Gjeilo for Decca Classics was top of the US and UK classical charts. The choir is now in demand for recording work from a variety of record labels, composers and orchestras and travels widely for concert performances.
Rupert was a chorister at the Chapels Royal, St. James's Palace, and won a scholarship to the Purcell School. He received (with distinction) a Masters degree in English Church Music from the University of East Anglia whilst Organ Scholar at Norwich Cathedral. For 11 years he was Assistant Organist at Wells Cathedral during which time he made around 30 CD recordings as accompanist and director. Rupert has worked with a variety of professional ensembles including the BBC Singers, King’s Singers, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. He regularly conducts and commissions new music for concerts and recordings. This year he is recording the choral music of George Arthur and a new Oratorio by Carson Cooman with the London Mozart Players.
The Choir of Royal Holloway
is considered to be one of the finest university choirs in Britain. The choir was created at the time of the foundation of Royal Holloway College in 1886, and was originally only for women’s voices. The group, comprised of 20 choral scholars and an organ scholar, is directed by Rupert Gough and undertakes a busy schedule of weekly services and concerts, international tours, recordings and live broadcasts. Royal Holloway is the only university that maintains a tradition of singing daily morning services, and is home to the only choir in the country performing weekly live-streamed concerts.
As part of the choir’s 50+ concerts a year, they regularly collaborate with and perform alongside many famous ensembles. These have included the King’s Singers, the BBC Singers, Britten Sinfonia, London Mozart Players, Onyx Brass, Fretwork and the jazz-trio Acoustic Triangle, with whom they broadcast live on BBC radio. The group also celebrates the work of living composers, and have commissioned works from Sir James MacMillan, Gabriel Jackson, Richard Rodney Bennett, Cecilia McDowall and Paul Mealor. The choir’s diverse repertoire also includes larger-scale works including Vespers by Monteverdi, Rachmaninov and Rautavaara, Requiems by Mozart and Howells, and Gabriel Jackson’s Ave regina coelorum for choir and electric guitar which they also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Festival engagements have included the Spitalfields Festival, the Three Choirs Festival, the Windsor and Swaledale festivals, the Cheltenham Festival (with alumna Dame Felicity Lott and the City of London Sinfonia), and numerous residencies at the Presteigne Festival.
International performances are also an integral part of the choir’s work. They have toured most European countries, and have been broadcast on national television and radio all over the world. A tour of all three Baltic States saw the choir performing in the Latvian Song Festival with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, in a concert (sung in Estonian) broadcast nationally on the Estonian Day of Independence. Further afield, the group has visited Beijing and had a number of successful tours to the US and Canada. The choir regularly sing at high-profile events which have included the Annual Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall (live on BBC television), an awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and for the Magna Carta 800 celebrations, in which they performed a new work by John Rutter in the presence of HM the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. More recently they sang at the wedding of Ellie Goulding and Caspar Jopling at York Minster.
The choir are much in demand for recording work with orchestras. A live concert recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Thomas Adès and the Britten Sinfonia is due for release from Signum Records. The choir has also recorded James Francis Browns The Heavens and the Heart with Orchestra Nova and Joanna Marsh’s cantata The Pearl of Freedom with the London Mozart Players, as well as her vast piece for brass and orchestra, The Tower. More recently, the choir have recorded Dan Locklair's Requiem, an album of music for choir and organ by Flemish composer, Flor Peeters, and travelled abroad to record a disc of lesser-known French music by Pierre Villete, entitled Messe da Pacem. The choir has also recorded new music by Matthew Coleridge and George Arthur over the past year, with a new album of music by Ola Gjeilo coming soon.
The choir has an extensive and highly acclaimed discography with Hyperion, Decca, Signum and Naxos amongst others, and has one of the busiest recording schedules of any collegiate choir. Recordings include music by 16th century composer Peter Philips with the English Cornett & Sackbut ensemble, contemporary American choral music by René Clausen and Stephen Paulus and madrigals from Victorian England. The choir is renowned for their performances of Nordic and Baltic music, and has recorded works by Vytautas Miškinis, Rihards Dubra, Bo Hansson, Tõnu Kõrvits (with the Britten Sinfonia) and Ola Gjeilo to great acclaim. The 2018 release Winter Songs with Gjeilo was No. 1 in the UK and US classical charts.
