Leeds Festival Chorus

New music has often been commissioned or championed by the Chorus: works written for the chorus and conducted in Leeds by the composer include Antonín Dvořák's St. Ludmilla, Edward Elgar's Caractacus;[1] Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, and perhaps the most famous commission was Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, first conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Bach, Berlioz, Thomas Tallis, Mahler, Verdi, Rossini, Elgar, Schönberg, Poulenc, Hindemith, Schubert, Richard Strauss, Shostakovitch, Peter Maxwell Davies and many other composers.

All past and future concerts can be found on the Leeds Festival Chorus website, along with details of online videos made during the 2020 Pandemic.

It was made up of photographs of ancestors of Leeds Festival Chorus, City of Glasgow Chorus and Cantabile Choir who took part in various capacities in the First World War, together with photographs of staff and patients at Leeds's main war hospital at Beckett Park (2nd Northern General Hospital) were on display, with stories and explanations to accompany them.

The three choirs, accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic, all performed in Benjamin Britten War Requiem at Leeds Town Hall on 17 November 2018.

These engagements came about after an invitation was received from the concert pianist Alessandro Taverna, who performed at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 2009 (3rd prize), and who is a native of Caorle, near Venice.

The concerts took place in Saint Stephen's Cathedral in Caorle, and in St Mark's Basilica and Chiesa dei Gesuati in Venice.

Support for Leeds Youth Choir is part of the Chorus's policy of encouraging young people to take more interest in classical music.