About Us
Rehearsals, Come & Sing Events & Concerts
The choir, which was founded in 1944, performs at least three concerts a year. These include two with professional orchestras and top-class soloists, typically in late autumn and early spring, and a third with a lighter programme in the summer. We also hold a Christmas music and carol concert, typically with a local primary or junior school, and also at least one Come & Sing event a year on a weekend when non-members are invited to rehearse and perform music with the choir in an informal and sociable setting. We welcome the opportunity to sing additionally at local festivals and similar events.
We work in parallel with the school terms, rehearsing the current programme on Monday evenings with a concert performance at the end of term. The season runs from September to June with breaks for Christmas, Easter and half-terms. Holiday dates are announced at the beginning of each term and full details are on our members pages.
Our Saturday 'Come & Sing' events, are rewarding and enjoyable opportunities to spend a day engaging with wonderful music in greater depth and with more time to explore than our rehearsals permit. In recent years we held an event on opera choruses and tackled Mozart's Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elijah, the Brahms German Requiem and Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
If you would like to support the choir, you can find details of our Friends and Patrons scheme here.
Overseas Tours
As well as our concerts in the Dulwich area, the choir has performed more widely, both in major London venues such as Cadogan Hall and the historic Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich, and abroad. While the pandemic has prevented us from arranging anything since the first lockdown back in March 2020, we did offer regular tours to continental Europe every couple of years prior to that, and certainly hope to resume that rhythm in the future. A tour to Italy's Amalfi Coast in October 2018 included concerts in Sorrento, Ravello and Salerno. The previous tour, in 2016, was to Spain, and since the first overseas concert tour in 1998 we have also visited Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Estonia, Portugal and Bosnia-Herzegovina, performing in a number of prestigious venues.
Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The government has removed remaining domestic restrictions in England. As this may be subject to change, the Dulwich Choral Society will follow and implement medical and government advice as required. Audience members and performers who show symptoms of a respiratory infection or test positive for Covid-19 are advised to remain at home. You can contact membershipdcs@gmail.com to arrange a refund or reservation for a future concert.
We take the risk of Covid 19 very seriously and wish to reassure and welcome our audiences and musicians by monitoring developments and following guidance. Any further developments will be placed on this homepage and our social media.
