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About
The Temple Music Foundation was founded in 2002 to support and promote the music in the Temple Church and to help provide resources towards the education of the choir's boy choristers at the City of London School.
The Foundation's first task was to raise sufficient funds for the realisation of The Veil of the Temple by Sir John Tavener which the Temple Church had commissioned. This extraordinary work, an all-night vigil, was performed without pause between dusk and dawn, from 10.30pm to 5.30 am. The performance by the Temple Church Choir, augmented by the Holsts Singers, involved over 150 performers. It was also relayed live both in sound and vision, to an audience of 750 in Inner Temple Gardens. It was regarded as a critical triumph and a significant new spiritual work for people of all faiths, or of none.
Since the achievement of world premier performances in the summer of 2003, the Choir has performed The Veil in New York at the Lincoln Center Festival, and also in shorter form at their debut performance at the BBC Proms.
The Temple Music Foundation continues its work in promoting and raising awareness of the Temple Church's music through the presentation of concerts and recitals in the church. The audiences have increased year on year and the latest anthem concerts have had capacity audiences.
The TMF supports the Temple Church in its search for the boy choristers whose voices must be of a recognisably high standard at the young age of around seven years, although boys of any age are considered. They must also be academically able in order to take up the scholarship offered to all successful candidates to City of London School.
The TMF will continue and develop its increasingly established and acclaimed programme of choral concerts, organ recitals and the cantata concerts which spotlight the outstanding young choirmen who are at the beginning of solo singing careers. The next big milestone is the Quatercentenary celebration of the Royal Charter in 2008.
The Temple Music Foundation is a registered charity No. 1095141, and a company limited by guarantee. It is governed by a Trustee Board of Directors under the Chairmanship of Sir Richard Aikens, its Directors being Mr Terence Coghlan QC, Ms. Rosamund Horwood-Smart QC, Ms. Catherine Otton-Goulder QC, Sir Peregrine Simon and Mr Robert Venables QC. The members of the Company are The Master Treasurers of the Honourable Societies of the Inner and Middle Temple for the time being. Secretary of the Company is the Collector of Inner Temple, Mr Nick Paladina.