The King's Singers Live at Christmas
Gosh, they're good, aren't they? For decades, The King's Singers have consistently, though changed of personnel, stood for excellence - and fun
This is a live performance from Temple Church in January 2026. As always, the repertoire is perfectly considered: the Plainchant O Sapientia cedes to a five-voice version by Robert Ramsey (c. 1590s - 1644), glorious in its linear freedom. It's the loveliest of segues, ceding itself to the darker sounds of Guerrero's Virgen sancta.
The programme explores modern responses to texts such as these, but not before we go back further in time: Hildegard of Bingen's O virtus sapientiae, heard against a vocal drone, utterly timeless, the Temple Church acoustic allowing just the right amount of bloom:
Bob Chilcott once sang with the King's Singers, and is now a highly respected composer of choral music himself - O Adonai shows why; it is absolutely the equal of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's setting. If Bernstein's setting of The Lord's Prayer seems less interesting musically (except for an interesting harmonic sleight on "as we forgive those who trespass against us"), how John Rutter's arrangement of Angelus ad virginem spices the atmosphere:
The King's Singers move easily from the ancient to the modern. The mediaeval carol There is no rose sits easily with Piers Connor Kennedy's A Spotless Rose and James MacMillan's O Radiant Dawn. The new jewel on the block here is the Kennedy, a moment of interior and yet radiant calm:
If I would like just a bit more ecstatic rawness to MacMillan's O Radiant Dawn, the restrained version of In dulci jubilo (arranged Robert Lucas Pearsall) works perfectly to my ears, followed by a beautifully-phrased O come all ye faithful:
The arrangements of well-known music for unaccompanied ensemble allows for a different slant - O come all ye faithful becomes less a collective statement. In between that and Away in a Manger (arranged Kennedy) is Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla's (c 1590-1664) remarkable, A siolo flasiquiyi, an example of a "negrillo," a type of Villancico:
The super-tight ensemble fo Past Three O'Clock seems to encapsulate everything that represents The King's Singers in just a few scant minutes:
Spirituals are represented here by a gutsy Children go where I send thee; it prefaces the jazzier tail-end (but not coda) of the concert: George Michael's Last Christmas and the lovely story-telling of Christmas Alphabet (Buddy Kaye & Jules Laman, arranged Nicholas Ashby). A lovely touch at "the icing on the ..." as well:
Warm spice suffuses Ashby's arrangement of Vince Guaraldi's Christmas Time is Here before the penultimate A Holly Jolly Christmas, a barber shop delight.
But now for that coda: a turn inwards for Holst's In the bleak midwinter, one of the most beautiful pieces of Yuletide music:
A Chrimbo treat, then. The immediacy of the performances speak of the live provenance, but the sheer perfection of delivery speaks of transcendental excellence.
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