Gonville and Caius College was founded in 1348, but the musical tradition stems from the late nineteenth century when Charles Wood became Organist. The choir in Wood’s day contained boy trebles, but it is now a mixed undergraduate group directed by Dr Geoffrey Webber, who has been Precentor and Director of Studies in Music at the College since 1989. The choir sings Chapel services during the University term and has a busy schedule of additional activities including concerts, recordings and broadcasts. It travels extensively abroad, performing at a variety of venues ranging from major concert halls to universities, cathedrals and churches in Europe, America and beyond, often in connection with other professional ensembles such as Opera Northern Ireland and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco, and also gives a number of concerts in Cambridge, London and elsewhere in the UK each year, appearing in venues such as St John’s, Smith Square and at the Spitalfields Festival in London, as well as performing in churches, schools and halls around the country.

Live radio broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 form a regular feature of the Choir’s schedule. Broadcasts of Choral Evensong have been notably adventurous in content and have ranged from baroque anthems performed with period instruments to Russian and Greek Orthodox music, South African music, and music composed especially for the choir by leading British composers such as James MacMillan. The choir has also appeared on television programmes on BBC 1, BBC 2, Channel 4 and the BBC World Service, and on several foreign networks.

The choir’s recordings have tended to specialise in the re-discovery of forgotten choral repertories, often including previously unpublished music from within the English choral tradition and beyond. A series of highly acclaimed releases (mainly on the former ASV label) has included music by English composers Samuel Wesley, William Child, Edmund Rubbra and Patrick Hadley, Rebecca Clarke, Robin Holloway and John Sanders, and by continental composers Joseph Rheinberger, Giacomo Puccini and Leonardo Leo. The choir has also released two reconstructions, the Latin Mass in E flat by Janáček and the St Mark Passion by J S Bach (and Keiser), three programmes of Swiss music on the Guild label in conjunction with the National Library of Zürich, and, on the Priory label, two volumes of the complete anthems of Charles Wood. A DVD of music by Francis Poulenc featuring the Choirs of St John’s, Clare and Caius Colleges, has been released on the Opus Arte label, and other collaborations include a recording of music by John Rutter with the choir of King’s College and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, released by EMI.