Our History

Gonville & Caius College Choir is a mixed choir of 24 male and female voices. It is one of the UK’s leading collegiate choirs, with an international reputation for performances of exceptional quality but also for innovative and adventurous recordings. It tours regularly in the UK and across the world.

The College’s musical tradition began at the end of the nineteenth century with a choir of men and boys, founded by the celebrated composer of Anglican church music Charles Wood, and later became an exclusively undergraduate male choir under Wood’s successor the composer Patrick Hadley. Hadley was succeeded by Peter Tranchell, under whose direction the choir became mixed in 1979, and Geoffrey Webber directed the choir from 1989 until 2019.