In 1993 a group of “rookie” male voice choir singers met in St James Barn, the residence of one of the singers, to make music together.They had just discovered the pleasure of singing in a male voice choir and wanted to explore the distinctive repertoire.So was born St James Singers.

As our tenth birthday passes into history, we have certainly come a long way from those early days, securing an enviable reputation throughout Oxfordshire and beyond as a small and talented a capella male voice ensemble.

We have given over 120 concerts drawing on an eclectic repertoire covering 12 centuries of sacred and secular vocal music. This includes plainchant, medieval songs, renaissance motets, madrigals,Victorian parlour songs, glees, West Gallery music, early American psalms, folksongs, Welsh hymns, part-songs, spirituals and evenspecially written arrangements of modern ‘pop’ songs and our own commissioned work.

Being small in number, St James Singers often performs at functions where space is limited. However, the group aspires to provide high quality musical entertainment for all tastes, occasions and situations whether meeting room or concert platform. Past engagements have ranged from private parties, weddings and business functions to fund-raising events for local and national charities and churches; from Christmas concerts and Women’s Institute parties to recitals at music festivals.Concerts typically include a wide variety of music, usually themed to the venue or occasion and with our unusual all male line-up and diverse repertoire, demand for our singing is growing rapidly.

To mark our 10^th anniversary, we recorded our first commercial CD entitled “Wantage Bells” and the 21 tracks include a representative sample of our performance repertoire, both ancient and modern.

The CD costs just £10 and is on sale at all our concerts.