Crouch End Festival Chorus

The Crouch End Festival Chorus functions as an autonomous ensemble rather than one linked to any festival. Its formation occurred in the mid-1980s under David Temple and John Gregson, both of whom had earlier sung as tenors with the London Philharmonic Choir. Within a decade the group ranked among England's foremost large choirs, having assembled a wide-ranging catalog that stretched from core classical pieces to obscure modern compositions and thereby secured four Performing Right Society Enterprise Awards.

Although numerous milestones had already accumulated by the mid-1990s, fresh distinctions kept arriving. The choir took part in a 1997 Royal Festival Hall concert honoring Philip Glass' 60th Birthday, appearing with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Martyn Brabbins. In 1998 it delivered the Verdi Requiem before a capacity audience at Westminster Central Hall, closing the year with its debut Barbican promotion.

Demonstrating the CEFC's ability to fuse established and new music, the ensemble commissioned Paul Patterson's Hell's Angels, which incorporated the Brodsky Quartet, and closed the program with Mozart's Requiem. Numerous recordings have followed, among them the ongoing Cinema Choral Classics series featuring the collaboration Fin de Siècle with composer Joby Talbot, David Bedford's Twelve Hours of Sunset captured alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Christmas Choral Classics issued in the 2000s.

During the 1998-1999 season the choir presented its first Royal Festival Hall concert, culminating on July 4, 1999, in a program marking American independence that paired John Adams' Harmonium with concert excerpts from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

Throughout the present century the Chorus has sustained its engagement with traditional classical repertoire, releasing in 2017 the first English-language recording of Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245, since the early 1970s. New commissions have likewise continued. Increasingly, however, its work has extended into non-classical domains. In 2010 the group appeared at Britain's Glastonbury Festival supporting former Kinks vocalist Ray Davies and has also performed with Oasis and Noel Gallagher. Its contributions to pop albums now surpass one hundred releases. Film soundtracks such as The Awakening (2011) and television scores including the BBC's Dr. Who have featured the choir.

Among its 2017 engagements was a central role in Roland Perrin's jazz-klezmer cantata Lansky: The Mob's Money Man, a work commissioned by the choir and centered on American mobster Meyer Lansky. A 2020 recording of Britten's Saint Nicolas: A Ceremony of Carols further documented the ensemble.