John Rutter Tickets

John Rutter's early years at the piano

Rutter tells his own story on his website. Music arrived at home, when he lifted the lid of the old upright piano in his parents' London flat and began to prod the keys. Piano lessons followed at seven, and at a boys' school with daily choral worship the director of music, Edward Chapman, a former pupil of Charles Wood, treated composition as normal and pointed him towards Cambridge. Born in London in 1945, he had first sung as a chorister at Highgate School. At Cambridge he met David Willcocks, director of King's College Choir, who encouraged him to conduct and recommended him to Oxford University Press. OUP signed him up as a student and has published him ever since.

Clare College and the Cambridge Singers

Rutter studied at Clare College, where he wrote his first published compositions and conducted his first recording before graduating. He returned as Director of Music from 1975 to 1979, leading the chapel choir in broadcasts and recordings, then gave up the post to make more time for writing. Since 1979 his working life has been split between composing and conducting. In 1983 he formed the Cambridge Singers, a professional chamber choir set up mainly to record, and in 1984 he founded Collegium Records as a home for definitive recordings of his own music. Its catalogue includes The John Rutter Christmas Album, Be Thou My Vision and his Gloria, Requiem, Mass of the Children and Magnificat.

The music behind the concerts

The larger choral works came steadily: Gloria in 1974, Requiem in 1985, Magnificat in 1990, Psalmfest in 1993 and Mass of the Children in 2003. Alongside them sit orchestral and instrumental pieces, a piano concerto, two children's operas, television music and writing for The King's Singers. Fancies, a six-movement set for choir and chamber orchestra, was written in 1971 for the City of London Sinfonia and Richard Hickox, and had an early outing at an open-air concert beside the Thames. Birthday Madrigals, from 1995, marked the 75th birthday of the jazz pianist George Shearing. Rutter co-edited four volumes of Carols for Choirs with Willcocks and edits the Oxford Choral Classics series.

Royal occasions and honours

Clare College lists music for the weddings of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for the Golden and Platinum Jubilee thanksgiving services, and for the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. He received a Lambeth Doctorate of Music in 1996, a CBE in 2007 and the Royal College of Organists' RCO Medal in 2014. In September 2023 he received the Ivors Academy Fellowship, whose earlier holders range from Elton John to Judith Weir, and he was knighted in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours.

Hearing Rutter conduct

Rutter has guest-conducted in Europe, Africa, North and Central America and Australasia, and he has led concerts at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His Come and Sing workshops open the music to anyone who wants to join in. Tix Choice compares ticket sellers, so a seat near the choir or a wider view from higher up can be priced side by side.

Tickets currently start from £296. The average starting price across listed events is £296.