Finchley Children’s Music Group is a North London children’s choir, dedicated to the promotion of choral music for young people. It is a highly versatile group of mixed-voice choirs producing a natural, vibrant vocal quality together with a high level of musicianship and professionalism. FCMG was founded in 1958 to give the first amateur performance of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, and for most of its life has been the most celebrated children’s choir of its kind in the United Kingdom. Since its formation it has pursued an ongoing commitment to the commissioning of new music for children’s voices. Composers who have written for the group include Brian Chapple, Malcolm Williamson, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Alex Roth, Piers Halliwell and Christopher Gunning. FCMG is regularly invited to supply the children’s chorus for major choral works, performing frequently with the LSO, BBC SO, RPO, LPO and with the Crouch End Festival Chorus, under conductors including Kurt Masur, Matthias Bamert, André Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy and our president Sir Colin Davis. Recent FCMG appearances at the BBC Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, London include Weill’s Propheten (1998); Nielsen’s Springtime in Fünen (1999); Alex Roth’s Earth and Sky (2000) with Joanna McGregor, and Britten’s War Requiem (2004) while other highlights have included Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges and Britten’s Spring Symphony both under André
Previn, and High Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris on All Saints’ Day 2003, performing Britten’s
Missa Brevis. Many FCMG children have had the opportunity to sing with the English National Opera, the Royal Opera, the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and English National Ballet (for whom FCMG provides the “Snowflake Chorus” for the annual
Nutcracker), as well as at opera houses abroad. FCMG has made recordings for television, radio, film and disc - most recently for a TV musical of
A Christmas Carol for NBC starring Kelsey Grammer of Frasier -and has led the singing in prestigious events such as the VE and VJ Day memorial celebrations before Her Majesty the Queen. Their 30th anniversary production of
Noye’s Fludde was the first fully staged Promenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and in their 40th anniversary year they took part in the world première of the children’s opera
Alexander the Great by David Blake, on the island of Lesbos. FCMG has recorded a substantial amount of American Jewish music for the Milken Archive based in Santa Monica, California. A CD from that project is published in 2005 on Naxos
8.559436. FCMG’s previous Christmas collection “Little Donkey” (1997), under the direction of Murray Stewart, was sold in aid of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.
For more information, please visit http://www.fcmg.org.uk
