There’s a particular kind of London, Ontario morning that belongs to William Byrd.
Fog still clinging to the ponds, boots crunching over tree roots, and somewhere just ahead through the trees, a cluster of unaccompanied voices rising in four-part Tudor harmony.
That scene has become something of a signature for London Pro Musica Choir, a 45-voice community ensemble that has spent more than five decades proving that choral music doesn’t have to stay inside a church nave to move an audience.
As the group opens its 2026-27 season under the banner Emergence, for those that have never attended a London pro Musica Choir event, it’s worth taking a full look at who this choir is, what’s on the calendar, and why its programming has quietly become one of the more inventive corners of Southwestern Ontario’s classical music scene.
Who is London Pro Musica Choir?
London Pro Musica Choir, often shortened to LPMC, is the oldest unaffiliated concert choir in London, Ontario, founded in 1970 as a member-run chamber ensemble.
Under artistic director Paul Grambo and accompanist Hayoon Kim, the choir now presents a slate of concerts running from September 2026 through May 2027 that spans outdoor a cappella performance, family-friendly holiday programming, a full sing-along Messiah tradition, and a large-scale Requiem, all built around a season theme that Grambo describes as music capable of inspiring action while honoring the past.
A Half-Century of Choral Tradition in London, Ontario
London Pro Musica Choir’s history reads like a quiet but persistent record of achievement in a mid-sized city’s classical music community.
Since its founding in 1970, the choir has won the CBC Choral Competition Award, recorded nine CDs, and premiered new works by a roster of Canadian composers that includes Gerald Bales, Lydia Adams, Stephanie Martin, John Beckwith, and Andrew Balfour, alongside London-based composers such as Oliver Whitehead, Andrew Petrasiunas, and Rod Culham.
Over the decades, the podium has been held by some notable names in Canadian choral conducting, including Brian Jackson, Howard Dyck, Ken Fleet, Dr. Vicki St. Pierre, and Dr. Charlene Pauls. The choir has also performed repeatedly with Orchestra London and its successor, London Symphonia, under conductors Kevin Mallon, Ivars Taurins, Uri Meyer, and Timothy Vernon.
In 2024, the choir’s work was formally recognized when it won the Forest City London Music Award for Best Classical Vocal in the Choir/Group category, a local honor that reflects sustained community visibility rather than a single standout performance.
That same year produced one of the more ambitious stretches in the choir’s recent history: a spring concert called Green Cathedral exploring water, wind, and trees through the lens of composers ranging from Cree First Nations composer Andrew Balfour to Eric Whitacre, followed almost immediately by an Earth Day performance of Oliver Whitehead’s Mass for All Creatures done in partnership with the Antler River Project, and capped by a sold-out staging of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana complete with hired orchestral musicians and soloists.
That kind of programming arc, moving from environmentally themed contemporary works to a 20th-century choral blockbuster within a single season, has become characteristic of how LPMC operates. The choir describes its mission as pursuing high-quality artistic choral performance across a genuinely diverse repertoire, and the numbers back that up.
LPMC typically mounts three to four full concerts per season, drawing repertoire from Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah on one end to sacred and secular music from Black, Islamic, Hebraic, South Asian, African, and Indigenous traditions on the other.
Rather than treating that range as a marketing point, the choir has built ongoing relationships with culture-bearers from those communities to guide accuracy of language and musical style, a practice that has continued into its collaborations with Western University‘s Community Engaged Learning initiative, Fanshawe College, Pride Choruses London, Brassroots, and the Canadian Celtic Choir.
The Voices Behind the Music: Paul Grambo and Hayoon Kim
Paul Grambo has served as London Pro Musica Choir’s artistic director following a career built as much on the stage as on the podium.
A London-based baritone originally from Brandon, Manitoba, Grambo trained at the Banff Centre and performed with Edmonton Opera in productions of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro, Puccini’s Tosca and Turandot, and Lehár’s The Merry Widow.
His musical theatre credits include lead roles in South Pacific, Fiddler on the Roof, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and his concert repertoire spans Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Haydn’s The Creation, Handel’s Messiah, and Fauré’s Requiem.
He holds a Bachelor of Music from Brandon University and a Master of Music in Performance and Literature from the University of Western Ontario, and beyond LPMC he conducts the Canadian Celtic Choir, serves as assistant director of the St. James Westminster Senior Choir, and sings with the JUNO and Grammy-nominated Elora Singers.
At the keyboard, accompanist Hayoon Kim brings a similarly credentialed background.
She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music along with a Bachelor of Education from Western University, where she is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate and works as a collaborative pianist within the faculty. Alongside her work with LPMC, Kim accompanies Amabile’s girls’ and women’s choir and Western University’s Chorale, and she has toured as a choral pianist across Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Scotland, and Ireland.
Emergence: The Vision Behind the London Pro Musica Choir 2026-27 Season
Every LPMC season carries a title that functions as an interpretive thread through otherwise disparate repertoire, and 2026-27 is no exception.
Following Reflections in 2024-25 and Beginnings in 2025-26, this year’s theme is Emergence, described by Grambo as music both old and new meant to inspire action and celebrate the past while addressing the challenges of the present.
In practical terms, that means the season moves from an outdoor Tudor and contemporary a cappella experience in October, through two distinct takes on the Christmas season, into two different versions of Handel’s Messiah in December, and finally toward a Good Friday performance of Mozart’s Requiem and a meditative closing concert built around candlelight and soundscape in late May.
Grambo’s season letter frames the year as confirmation that LPMC is “equally comfortable performing the classics as well as the new and exciting,” a claim the schedule itself substantiates. Below is a full look at each event, in chronological order, along with the venue, timing, and programming detail available for each.
Doors Open London
- September 19, 2026
The season’s first public appearance isn’t a ticketed concert at all.
On Saturday, September 19, LPMC performs a short set of familiar choral music as part of Doors Open London, appearing within a broader showcase of musical offerings hosted at St. James Westminster Church.
Doors Open events are typically free, drop-in civic heritage programs, and the choir’s inclusion functions as a low-barrier introduction for anyone in London who hasn’t yet heard the ensemble but happens to be exploring the church that will serve as its home base for most of the season’s other performances.
Byrd in the Woods
- October 3, 2026
The season’s official launch is also its most distinctive offering.
Byrd in the Woods takes place on Saturday, October 3, between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. at Westminster Ponds Conservation Area, an Environmentally Significant Area at 944 Western Counties Road in southeast London.
Rather than a single fixed performance, the event is structured as a self-guided nature walk with staggered entry times every ten minutes, beginning at 9:00 and running through 11:00, with each small group led by a volunteer guide along a winding forest trail. Along the route, walkers encounter singing stations where choir members perform a cappella, centered on the sacred music of English Tudor composer William Byrd but expanded this year to include contemporary composers as well.
The walk itself runs roughly 50 to 65 minutes over moderately difficult, mostly flat but uneven terrain, with tree roots and occasional hills to navigate; the site notes explicitly that the trail is not accessible for mobility device users and that no restrooms are available on site.
The event is free to attend, though a $20-per-person donation is suggested and pre-registration by email is encouraged, with staggered start times assigned in advance.
This is the third time LPMC has staged the concept, and the choir has described the format as being as powerful for the performers navigating the woods as it is for the audience discovering singers tucked among the trees. The event is also explicitly weather-dependent, a practical detail worth noting for anyone planning around it.
A Village Christmas
- November 28 & 30, 2026
The second concert of the season is a two-performance holiday production.
The first is a run-out performance on Saturday, November 28, consistent with the choir’s pattern of taking programming outside London proper to communities such as Exeter or St. Marys, where LPMC has performed in past seasons.
The second and primary performance takes place on Monday, November 30, at 7:30 p.m. at St. James Westminster Anglican Church, located at 115 Askin Street in London’s Wortley Village. General admission tickets are priced at $30 plus service charges, available through the choir’s Ticketscene event page.
A Village Christmas is built around what the choir calls the most cherished and heartwarming songs and carols of the season, continuing a tradition established in prior years of blending traditional carols with newer Christmas repertoire from composers such as Mendelssohn, Britten, Rutter, Wilcox, and Lauridsen, alongside works by local composer Bert Van der Hoek in past iterations.
The concert is framed as a warm, accessible entry point to the choir’s holiday offerings, distinct in tone from the more formal Messiah performances that follow it in December.
Sing-Along Messiah
- December 4, 2026
On Friday, December 4, LPMC joins First-St. Andrew’s Senior Choir and Strings for the annual Sing-Along Messiah at First St. Andrew’s United Church, located at 350 Queens Avenue in London.
Doors open at 7:00 p.m. with the performance beginning at 7:30 p.m., and this year’s edition will be conducted by First-St. Andrew’s own Chris Fischer rather than Grambo, continuing a long-running collaborative tradition between the two organizations.
The concert features professional strings and soloists drawn from the London area, and admission operates on a free-will donation basis with a suggested amount of $20 per person; the venue’s listed capacity is 100 attendees, and scores are made available for purchase at the door for anyone who wants to sing along from the audience rather than simply listen.
The choice of Handel’s Messiah for this slot continues what has become an annual fixture for LPMC; the choir has staged some version of the oratorio at the close of nearly every recent season, whether as a full concert performance, a sing-along, or, as this year demonstrates, both in the same December alongside a third, family-oriented version.
Messiah has told the story of the life of Christ from Nativity through Crucifixion to Resurrection in concert halls and churches every holiday season since its 1742 premiere, and this participatory format invites audience members to stand and sing their part alongside the choir.
A Children’s Messiah
- December 12, 2026
A week after the sing-along, LPMC mounts a substantially different take on the same source material.
A Children’s Messiah takes place on Saturday, December 12, at 4:00 p.m. at St. James Westminster Church.
This is an abbreviated afternoon program specifically designed for children and their caregivers, incorporating audience participation, modified seating arrangements, and the possibility of an instrument petting zoo for younger attendees.
The concert represents a deliberate accessibility choice on the choir’s part: rather than assuming families will simply adapt to a traditional evening concert format, LPMC has built a separate, shorter production around the needs of a younger audience while keeping the same beloved Handel score at its center.
Mozart’s Requiem
- March 26, 2027
The season’s spring centerpiece is Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626, performed as LPMC’s annual Good Friday concert on Friday, March 26, 2027, at 7:30 p.m. at St. James Westminster Anglican Church. General admission tickets are $30 plus fees.
The piece is presented in an arrangement for organ and choir rather than full orchestra, a scaled staging choice that keeps the production manageable for a community ensemble while preserving the emotional weight of the score.
The Requiem‘s own backstory adds considerable dramatic context to the performance: Mozart began composing the work in Vienna in late 1791 but died on December 5 of that year at age 35, having fully written out only the vocal lines and bass line for the opening sections while leaving the orchestration and several movements as sketches or verbal instructions.
His widow, Constanze, hired several of his students to complete the commission and secure final payment, and it was his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr who ultimately finished the orchestration, filled in missing harmonies, and composed several closing sections based on Mozart’s notes.
LPMC’s promotional materials frame the work as a meditation on grief, mortality, and judgment that pairs terrifying visions of divine wrath with intensely personal pleas for mercy and eternal rest, a description that positions the concert squarely within the choir’s Good Friday tradition of programming large-scale sacred works for the occasion, following prior years’ performances of the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems and Brahms’s A German Requiem.
This Shining Night
- May 31, 2027
The season closes on Monday, May 31, 2027, at 7:30 p.m. at St. James Westminster Anglican Church with a concert titled This Shining Night in the choir’s own season announcement, though ticketing materials for the same date also reference the program under the working title Celestial Bodies. General admission is $30 plus fees.
Whichever title ultimately sticks, the concert is described consistently as a meditative concert experience that incorporates soundscapes, candles, improvisation, and the setting sun itself as compositional elements, creating a combined musical and visual experience for both the audience and the choir members performing it.
This closing concert represents the most experimental entry on the season calendar, moving away from fixed choral repertoire toward something closer to a staged, atmosphere-driven event.
Coming at the very end of May, timed to use natural dusk light inside the church, it functions as a deliberate bookend to the season’s opening outdoor concert in October: both events treat setting and atmosphere as central to the musical experience rather than incidental to it, even though one takes place in a forest at sunrise and the other in a sanctuary at sunset.
London Pro Musica Choir Tickets, Passes, and Planning Your Visit
Tickets for the full 2026-27 season are sold through Ticketscene.
For anyone planning to attend multiple concerts, the choir offers a season pass priced at $120, providing five admissions for the price of four; the pass does not expire, which makes it a reasonable option both for regular attendees and as a gift for someone being introduced to the choir for the first time.
Prospective attendees should note that most evening concerts follow a consistent pattern of 7:00 p.m. doors with a 7:30 p.m. start, all-ages admission, and general admission-only seating rather than reserved sections.
Anyone interested in supporting the choir beyond ticket purchases can also do so through its donation page, and those curious about joining the ensemble itself can contact Grambo directly to schedule an audition, since LPMC continues to actively recruit new members across all four voice sections.
Join the London Pro Musica Choir With Your Tickets to Emergence
Few community choirs move, within a single nine-month calendar, from an unaccompanied outdoor nature walk to a family-adapted holiday matinee to a 234-year-old unfinished Requiem to a candlelit soundscape concert built around a literal sunset.
That breadth is precisely what Grambo’s season message points toward when he describes the London Pro Musica Choir as equally at home in the classics and in the new and unexpected, and it gives anyone considering a first visit a genuinely useful decision point: those drawn to tradition have the Sing-Along Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem waiting for them, while those looking for something closer to immersive theatre have Byrd in the Woods and This Shining Night on the same calendar.
Either way, the season gives London audiences a rare local chance to see a five-decade-old institution still actively reinventing what a choral concert can look like.
Get your tickets today for Emergence, available for purchase through Ticketscene only while quantities last.
