The King’s Singers at BVU

The Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble The King’s Singers will give a concert on Friday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Schaller Memorial Chapel at Buena Vista University. The concert will feature a special shared performance with BVU student musicians.

Admission is free and open to the public. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance time. This concert is part of the Doris Grau Performing Arts Series and has been made possible by the generous support of the Doris W. Grau Choral Endowment Fund.

The King’s Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over 50 years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, musicianship and versatility, which draws on both the group’s rich heritage and its drive to bring an extraordinary range of new and unique works, collaborations and recordings to life.

The King’s Singers’ extensive discography has led to numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, an Emmy and a place in Gramophone magazine’s inaugural Hall of Fame.

Growing the global canon of choral music has always been one of the group's key aims, and they have now commissioned more than 200 works by many of the most prominent composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. These composers include John Tavener, Joe Hisaishi, Judith Bingham, Eric Whitacre, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki and Toru Takemitsu. All of this new music joins their unique body of close harmony and a cappella arrangements, including those by individual King’s Singers past and present. Many of their early arrangements helped to develop the distinct “King’s Singers sound” and a large number of them, as well as their more-recent commissioned works and arrangements, are now available to buy as sheet music in their own signature series with Hal Leonard. Over two million copies of these works have been sold worldwide.

Alongside their demanding performing and recording schedule, the group also leads educational workshops and residential courses across the world, working with both ensembles and individuals on their approaches to group singing. To mark their 50th anniversary in 2018, they founded The King’s Singers Global Foundation in the USA to provide a platform to support the creation of new music across multiple disciplines, to coach a new generation of performers, and to provide musical opportunities to people of all backgrounds.

The King’s Singers were officially formed in 1968 when six recent choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge, gave a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. By chance, the group was made up of two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has stuck to this singular formation ever since that debut.