November 22nd
Verdi Requiem with Tiffin Oratorio Choir
(Tiffin Sports Hall)
December 8th - January 1st
Hansel und Gretel
December 17th
Tiffin Carol Service
(Kingston Parish Church)
Since its foundation in 1957, the Tiffin Boys’ Choir has been one of the few state school choirs to have been continually at the forefront of the choral music scene in Britain. It has given the premiere performances of works by, among others, John Gardner, Christopher Brown, Elizabeth Poston and Antony Pitts, recorded widely for the major recording companies, and undertaken frequent concerts and tours in England and abroad.
The choir has worked with all the London orchestras and performs regularly with the Royal Opera. Recent engagements have included critically acclaimed performances of Carmen (Antonio Pappano) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Richard Hickox), Boris Godunov with the Bolshoi Opera, performances of Britten's War Requiem with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kurt Masur, Richard Hickox and Antonio Pappano, a series of a capella concerts at the Spoleto Festival and throughout Romania, and Mahler’s Third Symphony with the LSO and Valery Gergiev and the LPO and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.
The choir has made recordings of most of the orchestral repertoire that includes boys’ choir. Notable releases have included Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with Klaus Tennstedt, which was nominated for a Grammy Award, Il Trittico (Puccini), Werther (Massenet) and Tosca (Puccini) for EMI and Antonio Pappano, Billy Budd (Britten) with the LSO and Richard Hickox, Mahler's Third Symphony with the Philharmonia and Benjamin Zander, and Britten's War Requiem with the LPO and Kurt Masur. 
Current releases include Mahler 3 (LSO/Gergiev) on LSO Live, and Carmina Burana (LSO/Hickox) and Owen Wingrave (CLS/Hickox) on Chandos, as well as the soundtrack on the computer game Fable II.
Tiffin School is state grammar school and specialist Performing Arts College in Kingston-upon-Thames, described by OFSTED as "exceptional". Almost all the 1200 boys in the school play a musical instrument, and over 100 boys study Music at GCSE and A Level. The school has been closely connected with the formation and development of the National Youth Music Theatre. Several members of the choir have gained choral scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge, singing in the choirs of King's College, St John's College and New College.
Engagements in 2008 have included performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Opera House, the Durufle Requiem and Bach Cantatas 48 & 118 with the London Mozart Players, and Britten Spring Symphony with the LSO and Daniel Harding; a concert tour to Dresden and Leipzig in July 2008 saw the largest concert audience in recent memory at the Thomaskirche Leipzig; and a tour of New Zealand is planned for February 2009. The choir performed the Britten War Requiem with Antonio Pappano and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House at the Royal Albert Hall on November 9th 2008 and will repeat this at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on March 21st 2009.
A companion choir, the Tiffin Children's Chorus, is open to boys and girls aged from 7 up to 13, and rehearses on Monday afternoons at 4.00 - 5.00 pm. The chorus has sung in performances of La Boheme at the Royal Opera House in July and October 2008, and is currently preparing to join the Tiffin Boys' Choir in Hansel und Gretel at the Royal Opera House in December 2008, as well as the BT Christmas Concert at the Royal Albert Hall. For further information, contact Alison White, Tiffin Arts College Administrator at awhite@tiffin.kingston.sch.uk, or phone 020 8546 4638 ext 133.
NEWS (November 2008):
Reviews of the Tiffin Boys' Choir' s participation in War Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall with Antonio Pappano (click on the titles to be re-directed):