Oslo Community Choir, directed by Martin Alfsen, gives a concert of sacred music in the Cathedral on Saturday 4 May 2024 at 7:30pm.
About the Choir
The Oslo Community Choir is a Christian ecumenical choir which was formed in the autumn of 2008. The choir consists of 40 singers from the Oslo area. The choir’s founder and director is Martin Alfsen, who is one of Scandinavia’s best-known choir directors in the field of Gospel and contemporary Christian music and who is also an acclaimed composer, producer and arranger.
Among the projects the choir has undertaken can be mentioned The Young and Soulful Messiah – a contemporary version of Handel’s great oratorio. The work was performed to a sold-out Oslo Concert Hall in March 2013 and again in 2024. In the spring of 2014, Oslo Community Choir presented the work Song Of Freedom – a tribute to Nelson Mandela on concerts in Norway and on a tour to South Africa. The work was performed in Cape Town as part of the Sounds Fringe Festival in the famous St George’s Cathedral.
Before Christmas 2014 the choir gave the premier performance of Martin Alfsen’s new mass Stjerneskinn (Starshine), celebrating the time of advent. In 2015 the choir recorded the work for release on CD and on digital platforms in November.
In the spring of 2015, Oslo Community Choir did their first tour in the USA, performing Norwegian gospel songs - many of them penned and arranged by Martin Alfsen - at concerts in the New York area.
In June 2016 Oslo Community Choir made its first trip to Montenegro. The choir performed concerts with the title Gospel Songs and Spirituals in some of the country’s beautiful cathedrals, and in 2017 and 2018 the choir performed the same programme on tours in Italy and Spain.
In 2019 Oslo Community Choir recorded the gospel album A Gospel Celebration together with Reflex and Ingrid Arthur; and the choir’s last foreign tour before the pandemic struck was in California in June 2019.
In the late summer of 2022, Oslo Community Choir made its first tour in Germany with concerts in the eastern part of Germany.