Birmingham chamber choir Ex Cathedra is embarking on an ambitious three-year programme to mark its 40th birthday. Founder-director Jeffrey Skidmore tells Terry Grimley his plans.
If Jeff Skidmore looks a bit young to have founded a choir 38 years ago, the explanation is that he was 18 at the time, and still at school.
Afterwards came study at Oxford and a lengthy career teaching in schools before running Ex Cathedra became something like a full-time occupation, though Skid-more still finds time for related activities such as running the early music course at Birmingham Conservatoire.
Today Ex Cathedra is one of Britain's most respected early music ensembles, with an emphasis on performing baroque music, although it also has a respectable list of new commissions to its name.
A well as a choir, it incorporates an even tighter vocal consort, a baroque orchestra and a highly-developed educational programme including innovative strands reviving singing in the playground and introducing it to hospitals.
Ex Cathedra has a tradition of finding and developing talented young singers, a number of whom, such as tenor Paul Agnew and soprano Carolyn Sampson, have gone on to become stars in their own right.
There's a substantial catalogue of recordings for Hyperion, ASV and Ex Cathedra's own label. Its most recent CD, Fire Burning in Snow, the third in a series exploring Baroque music from South America, has garnered rave reviews and was recently CD of the Week on Classic FM.
Now Jeff Skidmore is hoping to take Ex Cathedra up to a new level with an ambitious programme of performances, commissions and recordings, spanning three years, to celebrate the 40th anniversary in 2010.
He says: "For our first 20 years we were an amateur choir. We have a lot to thank the city council for. In the 1990s someone had the vision to increase our funding and help us to jump the next step into being a professional organisation.
"That has led to all the things we do - the education and the recording programme. We are ready now for the next level. We could become a world-class arts organisation that has a unique model, that celebrates us and celebrates Birmingham."
The three-year programme is built around three landmark concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Each is designed to recreate a historic event in Birmingham's musical history, beginning a week tomorrow with the 1784 performance of Handel's Messiah which launched the Birmingham Triennial Festival.
The other two, scheduled for October this year and November 2009, are the premieres of Mendelssohn's Elijah in 1846 and Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in 1900.
Then comes a series of commissions, from Fyfe Hutchins - alias Fyfe Dangerfield of pop group Guillemots, whose relation-ship with Ex Cathedra dates back to his teens - Alec Roth, James MacMillan and the popular American choral composer Eric Whitacre.
The Hutchins piece is part of a project next January called Convivencia, inspired by a multicultural period in Spanish history, in which Jewish and Islamic musicians will work with the choir, while Eric Whitacre is being invited to write a 40-piece motet in emulation of Thomas Tallis's famous Spem in Alium.
"I was told that James McMillan was fully booked up with commissions, but having his mobile number I called him, and he said 'I've been meaning to write something for Ex Cathedra for some time," says Jeff.
"We want him to write a major choral piece which we're calling Project Noah, because we think [Benjamin Britten's] Noye's Fludde was the last great community piece. He said he might be too busy to do it for 2010/11 but would certainly write us a piece for our Christmas Music by Candlelight concerts. It's a great compliment for us that a composer of his stature is going to do something for us."
Recording plans span no fewer than eight CDs, including double-CD recordings of the live performance of Gerontius and the oratorio Wings of Faith by veteran Birmingham composer John Joubert, which was originally commissioned by Ex Cathedra for the city's Forward festival in 2000 and given its first complete performance last year.
Demonstrating its own faith in Joubert, a prolific composer of choral music who has been neglected on disc, Ex Cathedra will also record another CD featuring two earlier commissions from him, South of the Line and the Rorate Coeli motets.
There will also be a Fyfe Hutchins CD, including the new Convivencia commission and previous pieces written for the group The other two discs will be devoted to the popular Christmas Music by Candlelight repertoire and music associated with the French baroque soprano Marie Fel.
The three big milestone performances require a much larger than usual choir to recreate the Triennial Festival Chorus. So there is an element of old-school reunion in bringing together present and former members, while maintaining Ex Cathedra's forward-looking tradition by blending in student voices.
"We had our first rehearsal last Wednesday," Skidmore said when we met last week. "People came from all over the place. One singer came from Holland for this rehearsal and we had people from Devon and Cambridge.
"There were singers from the Conservatoire, the choir I conduct there, some from the university - an amazing mix of experience. It's not a singalong Messiah, it's the highest possible quality. It will be interesting to see how fresh a large chorus can sound."
The soloists for Messiah are some of Ex Cathedra's star graduates - Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, James Gilchrist, and Peter Harvey.
"A member of the choir, Derek Acock, has been helping me to research the 1784 performance, and he's found out some fascinating stuff looking at archives in the city library.
"It was September when it happened, the 25th anniversary of Handel's death and they thought, wrongly, that it was the centenary of his birth. We know the players came up from London by coach and stayed at the Unicorn pub. An interesting thing is they used trombones in the Hallelujah Chorus. They had a double bassoon and several timpani players."
Although the three-year programme has been carefully planned, it is still dependent on finding additional financial support.
"It's such a good time to be doing this with all the interest in singing, and the sacred music programme that's being developed by the BBC. People seem to be interested in this spiritual dimension which inhabits most of the repertoire we do.
"Education is a fundamental part of what we do. On the day before we perform Messiah we have Symphony Hall for the whole day, and 600 kids are coming from all round the country to sing with us.
"But we need an injection of money that will help us to jump to that next stage. We're having a lot of meetings with the business community and we've recently met someone who is probably going to help us, but I don't think Birmingham concert-goers support us to the extent they should.
"We love what we do and we won't stop doing it, but with more support in terms of resources and audiences we can do even more, and grow artistically. We certainly have the repertoire to stretch us."
* Ex Cathedra performs Messiah at Symphony Hall on Saturday April 5 at 6.30pm (Box office: 0121 780 3333). There is a free education showcase with Ex Cathedra, Carolyn Sampson and the BackBeat percussion ensemble at Symphony Hall on Friday April 4 at 6pm. Tickets are limited and pre-booking is advised. Fire Burning in Snow is out now on Hyperion.
For more information about all of Ex Cathedra's projects, visit www.ex-cathedra.org
