THE OCTOPUS CHAMBER CHOIR

The Octopus Chamber Choir is a young semi-professional group of 32 singers, containing singing students, musicologists, and good amateur voices from Flanders and the Netherlands.
Since its founding in 2000 by the promising young conductor Bart Van Reyn, the chamber choir works on a project basis, and has attained in a short time a remarkable position in Flanders.

The repertoire varies from renaissance to contemporary, but with an accent on Early Music.
Besides many a capella programmes, masterworks such as Messiah, Mozart Requiem, Haydn Creation, Adams El Nińo, Brahms Requiem and Ravel Daphnis et Chloé are on the program. An annual tradition on Good Friday is Bach's St-John Passion in Antwerp’s Carolus Borromeus Church.

Every season the Octopus Chamber Choir performs with other groups. They have shared the stage with such choirs as Magdalen College Choir Oxford, Chapel Choir of Royal Holloway London, Ensemble Polyfoon, the Flemish Radio Choir and the Choral Academy. They have performed with the Octopus Baroque Orchestra, the Flemish Radio Orchestra, the Flanders Philharmonic, Musica Viva Moscow and the baroque orchestra B'Rock.
They work with such great conductors as Yoel Levi, Enrique Barrios, Sîan Edwards, Richard Egarr and Philippe Herreweghe.
The Octopus Chamber Choir performed in 2005 at the Beethoven Happening in deSingel Antwerp and the Klarafestival in Bozar Brussels, and made several radio recordings for Klara. This season they opened the Klarafestival with Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" accompanied by the B'Rock baroque orchestra conducted by Richard Egarr.

This season they are invited to perform Haydn’s Creation in Moscow with the orchestra Musica Viva conducted by Alexandr Rudin and Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Sea Symphony” conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.