Music at Churchill College

The excellent Music facilities at Churchill are some of the best in the University and the largely student-run music ensembles and societies provided a wonderful opportunity to conduct, manage and generally shape the musical life of the College – a highlight of my time at Cambridge.”

Tom, Music Student

Based on-site, Churchill College’s purpose-built Music Centre is spacious, modern and versatile.

It features a recital room, a practice room, a large recording studio, and a fully-equipped control room.

Our Artist By-Fellows work regularly at the Music Centre. Our current Artist By-Fellows are the Marsyas Trio.

Additional performance spaces are available on-site at the Wolfson Hall and the Chapel at Churchill College. Churchill College is also home to the Centre for Intercultural Musicology, which promotes research-in-practice in the interdisciplinary domains of music, arts and sciences.

The Music Centre is equipped with a Steinway grand piano, a Rubio harpsichord; additional piano, keyboard, bass guitar and amplifiers, and College drum kit.

We aim to provide all full-time students of Music with a Clavinova piano free of charge. Other students can hire any remaining pianos at a cost of £40 per term.

Membership of Churchill College Music Society (ChuMS) is completely free and open to all members of the college, staff or student, and the wider university. Our mailing list keeps everyone up to date on upcoming concerts and events from the Inter Alios choir and Orchestra on the Hill, two ensembles that you can read more about below.

ChuMS organise Jazz in the bar, a termly event containing mostly Churchill students who play jazz, generally taking place in the Churchill College bar, with the support of Churchill Jazz Band.

ChuMS

Churchill College runs a range of musical events from recitals to open mic nights.

Full Michaelmas 2024 Recital programme

Recordings are available from many of our past events on our YouTube playlist:

Music at Churchill: YouTube playlist

Inter Alios is an un-auditioned choir (except for a number of Choral Scholars). If you would like to try singing in the choir then please contact Ewan Campbell. All events are free and open to all, and followed by a drinks reception.

The Inter Alios choir sing alternate Sundays at their two colleges, serving as the Chapel Choir to the ecumenical Chapel at Churchill, and hosting a unique ‘Music and Words’ event in Murray Edwards that combines choral music, poetry and a short address. We are proudly inter-faith, inter-collegiate, and international. We meet on Tuesdays from 6pm-8pm and Sundays from 4,30-6.30pm.

We are regular contributors to the Brandenburg Choral Festival, have performed in venues such as St Martins in the Fields and Ely Cathedral.  Within our colleges the choir sing at important feasts, and dine on high table once per term at each college.

The Orchestra on the Hill is a combined orchestra of Cambridge’s ‘hill’ colleges: Churchill, Fitzwilliam, Murray Edwards, Magdalene, Girton, Robinson, St Edmund’s and Lucy Cavendish.

The orchestra is student-run and open to any member of the University, especially to members of the ‘hill’ colleges, who play an orchestral instrument, usually to a standard of approximately grade 8 and above.

Rehearsals are on Sunday afternoons (1.00–4.00pm) in the Music Centre at Churchill College. We perform a concert towards the end of each term, with a “Composers’ Concert” each Easter, where we play new music submitted by members of the university.

Join the Orchestra on the Hill