Portishead Choral Society was founded in 1955. Our aim is to provide the local community with the opportunity to perform, or to listen to, classical choral music to a high standard.

Our season runs from September to June, and we normally hold 3 concerts a year, on a Saturday evening, in December, March and May/early June. The March and May concerts usually comprise classical pieces, although the May/June concert may include lighter works. The December Concert typically has one or two seasonal classical pieces and then a selection of Christmas Carols. We do not meet during the Summer (unless for a social event), and we also break over Christmas and Easter.

We are often invited to contribute to other musical events – in recent years we have sung carols at Tyntesfield House and Adlington House, and have taken part in the Pill Festival.

We aim to produce programmes of interesting, enterprising and varied music. The music we sing is drawn mainly from the standard, classical, choral repertoire, such as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart etc, but our repertoire sometimes reaches back to the earlier music of Purcell and Monteverdi, and we have sung mode modern music by Britten, John Rutter, Bob Chilcott, Eric Whitacre and Karl Jenkins. We have also, over the years, had pieces written for us including a setting of Psalm 150 (Praise the Lord) written by Robert Latham for our Golden Jubilee. More recently, for our Diamond Jubilee, Jonathan Palmer wrote Awake the Voice, a setting of six English texts relating to Christmas for soloists, choir and orchestra.