Choir of Merton College, Oxford, Britten Sinfonia, Benjamin Hulett & Benjamin Nicholas
Biographie Choir of Merton College, Oxford, Britten Sinfonia, Benjamin Hulett & Benjamin Nicholas
Benjamin Hulett
studied at New College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
The program for the 2024/25 season includes a European tour with Beethoven's Mass in C with Philippe Herreweghe, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchestre des Champs Elysees, Mendelssohn's “Lobgesang” with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra.
Benjamin Hulett has sung for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Hamburg State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the German State Opera, the Theater an der Wien, the Opera de Lille and the Teatro Real in Madrid, at the BBC Proms and at the festivals in Glyndebourne, Salzburg, Edinburgh and Baden-Baden.
Concert appearances have taken him to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. He has performed at London's Wigmore Hall and at the song festivals in Aldeburgh, Buxton, Oxford and Leeds.
Benjamin Nicholas
is a former pupil of David Sanger for organ and Denise Ham for conducting. He held the organ scholarships at Chichester Cathedral, Lincoln College, Oxford and St Paul’s Cathedral before moving to Tewkesbury Abbey, where he directed the Abbey School Choir and oversaw its transformation into Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum of Dean Close Preparatory School. He has directed the Choir at Merton College, Oxford since 2008, and in 2012 became the first full-time Reed Rubin Organist and Director of Music at Merton. During Benjamin’s time at Merton, the College has established the annual ‘Passiontide at Merton’ festival, and in 2013 the new Dobson organ was installed, a project with which he was closely involved. He made the instrument’s first solo recording (The Merton Organ, DCD34142) in 2014, and a disc of Elgar organ works (DCD34162) was released April 2016.
With Merton College Choir, Benjamin has toured internationally, given concerts in the Cadogan Hall and the Temple Church, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television.
As the founding director of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum he recorded extensively for Delphian, including discs of Weelkes, Mozart, Stanford and Rutter.
Other recent performances as a conductor have included Holst’s Savitri in the Cheltenham Music Festival, Mozart’s Requiem in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Oxford Philomusica. Benjamin Nicholas has collaborated with numerous composers, and is partly responsible for the Merton Choirbook, commissioned to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the College in 2014. Significant projects have included the first performances of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ in Oxford and New York, and the premieres of new choral works by Birtwistle, Dove, MacMillan, Saxton and Weir.
Choir of Merton College Oxford
consists of 30 undergraduate and graduate students at Oxford University reading for degrees in a variety of subjects. The choir's primary duty is singing at regular services in the famous 13th-century Chapel.
Since the establishment of Merton’s Choral Foundation in 2008, the choir has gained an international reputation for offering the best of choral music through tours, recordings and broadcasts. In 2020, the choir won the award for best choral album at the BBC Music Magazine Awards for its recording of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The choir’s discography on the Delphian Label has seen numerous five star reviews and many recordings have been named ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone magazine.
The choir has appeared at The Three Choirs Festival and the Cheltenham Music Festival, and recent London appearances include performances at The Barbican, St John’s Smith Square, Cadogan Hall and The Temple Church. The choir is regularly heard in concert with orchestra, and recent collaborations have seen the choir perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Elgar’s The Apostles), Instruments of Time and Truth (Bach’s St Matthew Passion) and Oxford Baroque (Bach’s Mass in B minor). The choir’s annual festival, Passiontide at Merton, has an established place in Oxford’s musical calendar, and has led to exciting collaborations with such groups as The Cardinall’s Musick and The Marian Consort.
Merton College Choir regularly tours overseas, and has recently visited the USA, Hong Kong and Singapore, France, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. In 2017, the choir sang the first Anglican Service in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
The choir’s commitment to contemporary music has seen numerous composers write for the choir. In recent years the choir has premiered works by Kerry Andrew, Birtwistle, Chilcott, Dove, Ešenvalds, Kendall, MacMillan, McDowall, Rutter, Tabakova and Weir. In recent years, the choir has given world premieres of a new works by Daniel Kidane, Roxanna Panufnik, Gabriel Jackson, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and John Rutter.
During 2025, the Choir enjoys a residency with the Britten Sinfonia which will see the Choir perform in concerts in Oxford and London and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 live from Merton College Chapel. The final concert of the residency will take place in the Sheldonian Theatre on Tuesday 11th November 2025.
