About Us

  • 20th Anniversary Concert

VOIX de VIVRE chamber choir was formed in 2003 by well-known professional tenor Neil MacKenzie.
As a long-time member of the BBC Singers, and hugely experienced choir trainer, he has directed this group in the broadest range of challenging repertoire, encompassing church and stage, state occasion, drawing room soirée and contemporary commission for radio broadcast. The expanding list of composers whose works Voix de Vivre has tackled ranges from Dunstable and Pygott to Scarlatti and Charpentier,  Frank Martin, Schoenberg, James MacMillan and Jonathan Dove.

Having participated in many first performances on Radio 3, Neil’s promotion of well performed, unaccompanied contemporary choral music is naturally at the core of  Voix de Vivre’s programming. However, the group has also greatly enjoyed working with pianists Stephen Betteridge and Andrew Leach, organists Alex Flood and Richard Carr as well as very successful collaborations with the Lawes Baroque Players, in Handel’s dazzling Israel in Egypt, and most recently, several performances with the St Albans-based Amadeus Chamber Orchestra.

In July 2019, Voix de Vivre had the great honour of presenting a programme of unaccompanied British choral music as part of the International Kodály Music Festival in Kecskemét in Hungary.

Voix de Vivre is privileged to have international opera singer Jeremy White as its Honorary president.

“There are occasional moments in concerts which are sublime, and even less often two or three such moments occur in the same event. Voix de Vivre’s concert of German Choral Greats at St Peter’s Church in St Albans was one of those rare events”.
John Manning

“… Voix de Vivre may be amateur by status, but their standards of performance were remarkably high”.
Lewis Forman

“Voix de Vivre sang with visibly enormous, heartfelt joy”.
Varga Géza, hiros.hu

“Choral director Neil MacKenzie achieved a wonderful blend of works, which not only celebrated the meaning of Christmas but also demonstrated the great ability of his choir. In all the evening was one of outstanding music, delightfully sung by a group of very experienced and well trained singers under an equally fine director”.
John Manning

VOIX de VIVRE