The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge celebrates 500 years

The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge brings the 500th anniversary of the founding of St John’s College to a climax with a large-scale celebratory concerts featuring Walton’s dramatic oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast, in the magnificent setting of Ely Cathedral on Friday 18 November.

The choirs are accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of St John’s Music Director Andrew Nethsingha. Andrew has invited past members of the Choir of St John’s to join in the concert, and the soloists are the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Dame Ann Murray, and St John’s alumni baritones Leigh Melrose. Alongside Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Ely hosts Mahler’s treasure-trove of glitteringly orchestrated folk melodies, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. St John’s Choir perform Bruckner’s Christus factus est, and the orchestra Elgar’s evocative overture In the South.

St John’s Quincentenary celebrations were launched in Cambridge in April this year by Her Majesty The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh who attended a performance by the College Choir in the Old Chapel ruins in St John’s College of O Lord, make thy servant, Elizabeth, our Queen, written by William Byrd for Queen Elizabeth I.

The event will take place on Friday 18 November at 7.30pm.

Ticket Prices: £45, £35, £25, £15, £10

Booking: www.elycathedral.org/diary/ Tel: 01353 660349 

The choirs’ performance of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast can also be heard in London’s South Bank on Thursday 15 December.