Who we are and what we do

a unique musical story telling style

5 men singing unaccompanied

and a narrator

central to our ethos is our enjoyable audience-friendly programming

OPUS ANGLICANUM

O.A. was founded in 1988 for a tour of the Netherlands, and was described recently in Choral Journal of America as ‘one of the most intriguing and entertaining ensembles currently performing’.

The five singers as individuals variously have experience as soloists at home and in Europe; in opera, oratorio and recital, in cathedral choirs and also in the major early music groups; the reader was with the BBC.

The speciality of the group is in presenting a unique programming which combines the spoken and the sung word from a very wide variety of sources. In addition to use of music of all types and ages, and their own in-house arrangements, OA has commissioned composers such as Sally Beamish, Judith Bingham, Gordon Crosse, and Howard Skempton for extended works including a narrator.

At the other end of the historical scale OA has an expertise in Gregorian chant, and has given presentations of pre-reformation liturgical services for Westminster Abbey, Salisbury Cathedral, Wells Cathedral, and both Worcester and Hereford Three Choirs Festivals.

OA has appeared for Royal Northern College of Music, Windsor Festival, Newbury Spring Festival, Gloucester Three Choirs Festival, BBC Radio 3, Festival de Wallonie; and their sequences have covered subjects as diverse as the Sonnets of Shakespeare, the Cornish fishing industry, the collecting of English folk music, the Tudor poet John Skelton, the escape of Charles 2nd, and the sinking of the destroyer HMS Duchess in 1939.