From atmospheric choral works in historic churches and Victorian swimming baths to a choral murder mystery, a folk collaboration and a timelessly stirring festive Messiah, Kantos Chamber Choir’s 2026/27 season pairs adventurous repertoire with an array of breathtaking settings, transforming world-renowned vocal performance into a series of unforgettable live experiences.
Here are the must-see highlights from the upcoming programme.
(Image credit: Ben Reason)
The windswept world of the Brontë sisters receives a fresh, vivid reinterpretation as Kantos combines choral music and spoken word, tracing the lives and imaginations of Charlotte, Emily and Anne through the perspective of their friend and champion, Elizabeth Gaskell.
Co-curated by Kantos Creative Director Ellie Slorach and Elizabeth Gaskell specialist Dr Sherry Ashworth, the absorbing hour-long performance draws on texts from Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Gaskell’s own writing, alongside music by composers including Cecilia McDowall, Tõnu Kõrvits, John Tavener and Helen Neeves.
The production visits three locations closely connected to the landscape and literary history of the piece, beginning in Lancaster and at Manchester’s Stoller Hall before concluding at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Haworth itself.
A beloved fixture of Kantos’ festive calendar, Christmas arrives by candlelight as the choir welcomes audiences into two atmospheric churches for an evening of traditional favourites, contemporary carols and plenty of communal singing.
Alongside works by John Tavener, John Rutter, Morten Lauridsen and Michael Head, the programme includes the winning entry from Kantos’ 2026 Carol Competition, judged by composer Cecilia McDowall, while organist Ben Collyer accompanies a selection of congregational favourites.
With candlelight, festive refreshments and the full-throated sound of a choir in full flight, these performances offer a suitably convivial start to the Christmas season at St. John’s Church, Chester and Manchester’s achingly beautiful St. Ann’s Church.
Handel’s perennial Christmas masterpiece returns to Manchester, and this time Kantos joins forces once again with its artistic partner Manchester Camerata for a performance in the soaring Great Nave of The Monastery.
Conducted by Laurence Cummings, one of the foremost Handel specialists of his generation and Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, the one-off concert brings together Kantos, four soloists and Manchester Camerata for an expansive reading of Messiah.
More than 280 years after its premiere, the work retains its extraordinary mixture of intimate reflection and jubilant spectacle, from its quieter passages through to the inevitable exhilaration of the Hallelujah Chorus.
In February 2027, two musical worlds separated by three centuries come together as the choir delivers a recital of Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices in direct conversation with J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin.
Inspired by her lifelong relationship with Bach’s music, Shaw borrows the structure and spirit of the Baroque master while transforming it through extended vocal techniques and contemporary textures. Kantos performs alongside string soloists from Manchester Camerata, with the programme moving between Bach’s original music and Shaw’s striking response before venturing into further works by both composers.
The performance visits Stoller Hall before heading to Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery the following afternoon.
In March, Kantos heads into the natural world with Rewild, an intrepid collaboration with folk-classical duo Stevens & Pound that charts an organic musical growth from seeds and soil through branches, birdsong and finally the open air.
Percussionist Delia Stevens and harmonica and melodeon player Will Pound join the choir for a programme that combines Hildegard von Bingen and Caroline Shaw with traditional folk song, newly written material by Kerry Andrew and an eclectic reimagining of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.
Improvised passages, unusual instruments and the duo’s distinctive folk vocabulary make every performance slightly different, while the journey of untamed blooming brings an ecological dimension to the exhilarating music.
The programme concludes on a deliciously sinister note in May, with a unique murder mystery in the brooding bowels of Victoria Baths.
A composer is dead, his favourite choir has gathered for his funeral and somewhere among the singers lurks a murderer, setting the scene for a captivating musical whodunnit that turns the renowned heritage building into the backdrop for an unconventional detective story.
Created by writer and director Jonathan Ainscough with Kantos Creative Director Ellie Slorach, SwanSong combines choral performance, investigation and flashbacks, with audiences moving through the hidden corners of the baths as they gather clues and meet a cast of suspicious singing characters.
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www.kantoschamberchoir.com
- Words:
- Wolf McFarlane
- Published on:
- Tue 8 Sep 2026
On the final weekend of September, Kantos opens their season with a musical immersion in water, reflecting both its immense power and its moments of profound stillness with a programme spanning centuries of choral music.
At Bolton Priory, Drop Drop unfolds inside the stunning Priory Church amid the historic ruins and riverside landscape, while Sunday’s Manchester performance places the audience above the magnificent empty swimming pool at Victoria Baths.
Across both performances, the choir floats between plainchant, Renaissance motets, traditional sea songs and contemporary works, including a Kantos commission from Shruthi Rajasekar, with four settings of Phineas Fletcher’s Drop, Drop, Slow Tears offering different perspectives on the same haunting text.