Northern Spirit Singers was founded in September 2000 by graduates from Newcastle and Durham universities, including the choir’s first musical director, Andy King. In 2015, Andy handed the baton over to Clare Lawrence-Wills; since 2020 she has shared this role with Richard Bruce. They were joined in 2023 by Katherine Hambridge and now Claire, Richard and Katherine form the leadership team. Meanwhile, Andy went on to found our sister choir, Southern Spirit Singers, with other alumni of the early group who had moved south.
Over the last two decades years the choir has continued to draw some members from Durham University students and staff. But it also includes singers from a range of professional backgrounds, including a large proportion of the region’s music teachers! We aim to deliver high-quality performances, but not at the expense of having fun: we stretch ourselves to give polished performances of challenging and rewarding repertoire, but we never lose sight of the joy of singing together.
In the first fifteen years of its life, the choir was very active in national and international competitions, which helped to establish our reputation. In 2011, we took in part in the “Venezia in Musica” International Choral Competition, winning first prize in the secular music category. In 2014 we were rated the best adult choir in the UK and appeared in the grand final of Choir of the Year on 7 December 2014. You can see extracts from that competition on our YouTube channel.
Our reputation has resulted in high-profile commercial and broadcast work. In October 2013 Northern Spirit Singers were featured on BBC Radio 3 “The Choir” programme broadcast from the Glasshouse Centre for Music, Gateshead, as part of a celebration of choral music in the North East. In March 2019 we took part in the Radio 3 Freethinking Festival at the same venue.
The choir joined soprano Lesley Garrett on three UK tours as well as on her TV Christmas special. We have appeared on Songs of Praise as Victorian carol singers, and as the backing choir for Barry Manilow at the Newcastle Arena. And we have appeared as the supporting choir for tenor Russell Watson on multiple occasions, at both the Gala Theatre, Durham and the Glasshouse Centre for Music.
In the local area, we have performed as guests of groups including Cleveland Philharmonic Choir, Guisborough Choral Society and Durham County Youth Choir. We have provided semi-chorus parts to various large-scale works, particularly with the Cleveland Philharmonic Choir at the Glasshouse, under the baton of John Forsyth MBE: notable events include Britten’s War Requiem in 2018 with soloists Roderick Williams, Mark Padmore and Rachel Nichols; and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast in 2014 with soloist Sir Thomas Allen. In Durham itself, we have collaborated many times with Durham-born composer Will Todd in community music projects, and regularly fundraise for the Durham Music Trust.
In recent years, as the professional profile of our members has shifted a little, we have focused on its activities in the North East. We give at least three concerts at year, with programmes that range from large-scale canonical works to themed concerts of music from many different time periods and national traditions. As a deliberately small chamber choir, we specialise in finely honed and blended performances of a cappella choral music, particularly twentieth- and twenty-first-century repertoire.
