The Choir of Fitzwilliam College

Conductor: Catherine Groom, with Alexander van Dijk and Charlotte Johnston

Founded in 1869, Fitzwilliam College is one of the constituent Colleges of the University of Cambridge. Fitz Choir, numbering around 24 students, aims to look well beyond the traditional choral canon with its liturgical repertoire, and welcomes committed singers with a range of musical backgrounds. It sings weekly services in Fitz Chapel and in concerts in College and beyond (most recently, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in Ely Cathedral). Its album The stalk had no knots, released in 2022 in physical form and on iTunes, Apple Music and Spotify achieved 15,000 plays across these platforms. The choir toured to Rome in 2022, singing at the Pantheon and to Ripon, Hexham and Lindisfarne Holy Island in 2023. In addition it forms the chorus (and provides many of the principals and orchestral players) for Fitz Opera’s annual fully-staged production (in 2022, Mozart’s Così fan tutte; in 2023, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore; and in 2024, Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel).

Catherine Groom is Director of Music, Praelector and a Bye-Fellow at Fitz, where she directs Fitz Opera and Fitz Choir, co-ordinates music-making across the College, supervises undergraduates across the University in music history and writes about psalms and harps. She has played, sung and conducted for a great many theatres including the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and in the West End including on the long-running RSC adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies, and in many dozens of operas ranging from Monteverdi continuo playing to the world première of Louis Mander’s opera Beowulf. She has worked extensively in film and TV both on soundtrack and on screen. She studied at Oxford University, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music.

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