London Pro Musica Choir was founded in 1970 as a chamber choir, organized and run by its members. LPMC was the first, and remains the oldest, unaffiliated concert choir in London with a current membership of approximately 45 singers. The choir has a tradition of singing large choral works as well as smaller pieces and a cappella selections. 

Milestones in our history include winning the CBC Choral Competition Award, the recording of 9 CDs, premiering and recording many new works by Canadian composers such as Gerald Bales, Lydia Adams, Stephanie Martin, John Beckwith, Andrew Balfour and local musicians including Oliver Whitehead, Andrew Petrasiunas and Rod Culham. The choir has been led by some of Canada’s finest conductors, including Brian Jackson, Howard Dyck, Ken Fleet, Dr. Vicki St. Pierre, and Dr. Charlene Pauls. We have performed with Orchestra London/London Symphonia many times, under the batons of Kevin Mallon, Ivars Taurins, Uri Meyer and Timothy Vernon. 

Our current artistic director and conductor, Paul Grambo, is also conductor of the Canadian Celtic Choir and assistant director of the St. James Westminster Senior Choir as well as being a member of the Elora Singers. In the past two years we have sung at Wordsfest, with Brassroots, with the Antler River Project, and with First-St. Andrew’s Senior Choir & Strings for their annual Sing-Along Messiah.

Before COVID, LPMC raised funds for London’s El Sistema music program for children, for a new hospice in Exeter, for church renovations at St. Marys United Church, Huron Shores United Church and for First-St. Andrew’s United Church. We regularly sang in St. Judes Anglican Church, Aeolian Hall,  Wolf Performance Hall, and First-St. Andrew’s United Church.

After COVID, in both 2023 and 2024, LPMC resumed its efforts to expand its outreach program, by partnering with churches in Exeter and St. Marys for special concerts, as well as performing at different venues within London such as Westminster Ponds (Byrd in the Woods), the DoubleTree Hilton (for the Women’s Canadian Club), and London Hunt Club. LPMC has also initiated ongoing collaborations with many local musicians and groups at Western (such as the Community Engaged Learning initiative) and Fanshawe College, Pride Choruses London, Brassroots, and the Canadian Celtic Choir, as well as solo musicians from the wider musical community. 

London Pro Musica Choir’s vision is to pursue high-quality artistic choral performances with a diverse repertoire that will inspire and entertain current and future audiences. LPMC presents three or four concerts a year, ranging from large classical choral favorites (Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Orff’s Carmina Burana), to shorter classical standards to modern sacred and secular music of different cultures. The choir is a mixture of amateur and professional musicians, instrumentalists and vocal soloists, as well as professionals in other areas such as law, health and teaching. Conductors of the choir have selected music from Black, Islamic, Hebraic, South Asian, African and Indigenous traditions, and culture-bearers from those communities have generously offered their expertise to assist us with accuracy of language and musical style. The ability to adapt our singing style to these varieties of music remains one of the strengths of the choir.

This artistic adaptability has been honed with our concerts in 2024. In our introspective, reflective Green Cathedral concert, we sang about wind, water, waves and trees from many different perspectives, ranging from Cree First Nations composer Andrew Balfour’s work Omaa Biindig to our own Rod Culham’s Canadian Waters Suite to Eric Whitacre’s Water Night to three poems by Robert Frost interpreted by composer Stephanie Martin. That concert was immediately followed by our Earth Day presentation of Oliver Whitehead’s Mass for All Creatures where we provided opportunities for local environmental organizations to exhibit in the church hall prior to the concert. For the concert we collaborated with members of the Antler River Project as well as the St. James Westminster Choir. We rounded out our season with a sold out performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana for which we hired several local musicians and soloists.

In the fall we began our season with the Byrd in the Woods done al fresco on an October Saturday morning in Westminster Ponds. The choir sang in small groups, a cappella in the open air. Our final two concerts of 2024, Handel’s Messiah and A Village Christmas, again presented very different vocal challenges for the choir from Handel’s beautiful oratorio with its long runs and complex harmonies, to traditional and new Christmas repertoire of Mendelssohn, Britten, Rutter and Wilcox, Lauridsen and local composer Bert Van der Hoek.