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 JUNO and Grammy nominated Elora Singers. In recent seasons we have sung at Wordsfest (Museum London), with Brassroots, with the Antler River Project, and with First-St. Andrew’s Senior Choir & Strings for their annual Sing-Along Messiah. We have sung at St. Judes Anglican Church, Aeolian Hall, Wolf Performance Hall, and First-St. Andrew’s United Church.

Before the COVID pandemic, LPMC raised funds for many worthy causes including:

• 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.

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.

Our 2024-25 season titled Reflections was a journey through musical contemplation and remembrance. We began our season with Byrd in the Woods – a truly experience a truly unique experience that blended the serene beauty of Westminster Ponds with the intricate harmonies of William Byrd’s sacred music done al fresco on a beautiful October Saturday morning. The choir sang in small groups, a cappella in the open air.

In December of 2024, we performed Handel’s Messiah in Exeter and performed a beautiful seasonal program titled A Village Christmas in St. Marys and at our home base of St. James Westminster Church. These concerts 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. We also were invited to perform a brief Christmas program for the Women’s Canadian Club, and for the London Hunt Club’s Victoria Christmas dinner. On Good Friday 2025, our Common Ground concert titled In Paradisum featured the profound beauty of the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems, that offered moments of solace and introspection. We concluded our 2024-25 season with the grandeur and exaltation of the Baroque era, presenting two masterpieces: Handel’s exhilarating Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi’s radiant Beatus Vir. These works, filled with vibrant energy and profound expression, offer a fitting culmination to a season spent looking back at the rich tapestry of choral music in our city and London Pro Musica’s place within it.

LPMC’s 2025/2026 season, Beginnings, features music both old and new that will inspire action and celebrate the past while addressing the challenges and potential of our present world.

The season launched with London composer Oliver Whitehead’s updated version of Mass for All Creatures. This exuberant work celebrates the beauty and fragility of all life, especially the animals that live alongside us. Additionally, with the generous support of The Good Foundation, new scores are being created to allow the work to be shared across Canada.  A new movement to the Mass has been written by the composer for the occasion, and a representative recording will also be created.

Our second concert of the season, Texture, celebrated the music and influence of 16th century Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The program featured Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli: an intricate, exquisite work written in defiance of a papal edict demanding that all sacred music be simple and stark. Our program celebrated this work and incorporated works by German composer Anton Bruckner. Bruckner lived 300 years later, yet his music rings with the old master’s influence and style. With this unadorned, a cappella program, we, like Palestrina, stand in defiant defense of the necessity of beauty in dark times.

2025 closed with two performances of an LPMC favourite, Handel’s Messiah. As in previous years, we collaborated with the FSA Senior Choir on a Sing-Along Messiah at First-St. Andrew’s United Church that featured strings and soloists from the London area. We performed a Messiah Highlights concert in St. Marys on Saturday, December 13, 2:00 pm. And we wrapped up 2025 with our own performance of Messiah, featuring professional soloists and strings at our home venue of St. James Westminster Church in Wortley Village. 

In 2026, we’ll embarked on our fourth annual Common Ground program, Brahms’ A German Requiem (Op. 45). This large, sweeping work for soloists and chorus comes in an arrangement written by the composer for one piano, 4-hands. Our soloists were soprano Jennifer Krabbe and bass-baritone Chad Louwerse with 4-hand piano accompaniment by Hayoon Kim and Sing Yuan Liew.

Finally, a large-scale collaboration ends our 2025-26 season: Water: An Environmental Oratorio by Ontario composer Stephanie Martin; excerpts of which we performed at our Green Cathedral concert om spring 2024. London Pro Musica Choir partners with Chor Amica and Music at First-St. Andrew’s Church to present the London premiere of this monumental new work for choir, children’s choir, and orchestra. The work tells the story of a small town grappling with decisions around climate change and water protection. We are very pleased the Paul Seed Fund from the London Community Foundation is supporting this concert.