Montes History

Graeme’s final concert with Cantorion Monteverdi was in Henllan, his home village, in July 2025. The concert was well attended by friends and families and local people from the village. The Church Institute was a splendid setting for the concert, and the organisers of the venue were extremely welcoming and helpful. The programme was the same as the choir had performed in Beaumaris in June, and featured Anastasia Zaponidou on cello. The performance went well, and, as usual, Graeme was passionate, sensitive and expressive in his conducting. The choir have enjoyed singing with Graeme over the past 8 years, and his choice of music has been varied, interesting and, at times, challenging! He passes the baton to Martin Brown and we are now looking forward to singing under his direction.

 The choir was formed in 1967 by Reginald Smith Brindle, then Professor of Music at Bangor University, and until the mid-70s was conducted by other university musicians. From 1975 John Huw Davies directed and conducted the choir for over forty years until he retired in 2017. In its early years the choir had between 25 and 30 voices but grew to over 50 singers in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. As well as the standard choral repertoire (Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Passions and B Minor Mass, Mozart’s Requiem) the choir has introduced rarely performed works in N Wales such as Britten’s War Requiem, Todd’s Mass in Blue, Dohnanyi’s Szeged Mass, Monteverdi’s Vespers, Williamson’s Symphony for Voices. Welsh composers and music have always been prominent in the choir’s programmes including works by William Mathias, Dilys Elwyn Edwards, Mervyn Roberts and the choir also commissioned and performed works by John Hywel and Sebastian Forbes. Under our present conductor, Graeme Cotterill, and with smaller choir numbers our repertoire has focussed largely on a cappella music and works with organ, piano, harp or instrumental accompaniment. The choir has made several European tours including to Sweden, Germany, France and Latvia and has collaborated with other choirs to perform large scale works such as Verdi’s Requiem and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast.