Alma Consort · London

A supplier your compliance team will not have to chase.

How we work with wedding and event planners, venue and hotel event teams, and private offices, in the United Kingdom and at destinations worldwide.

Tell us about your events

What you are booking

Alma Consort is a professional ensemble of eight to twenty-four consort singers based in London; The London Choral Service is its booking office. The same singers perform every engagement, and Luca Wetherall, Tutor in Music at the University of Oxford, auditions every one of them and directs the consort himself. The singers are prize-winning graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

For a planner the practical point is narrower: this is one supplier, one contact, one invoice, and a group that arrives the day before and rehearses in the room. You are not assembling singers from a directory and hoping they have met.

How a booking runs

  1. Date and outline

    You send the date, the venue and whatever the running order looks like so far. We confirm availability, usually the same day.

  2. Quote and paperwork

    A single quote covering fees, travel and accommodation, with the booking agreement alongside it. Insurance certificates, risk assessments and method statements come with it rather than after three requests.

  3. Programme

    Luca proposes music and a running order and revises it with you or directly with the couple, whichever suits how you work. We will talk to the celebrant and the organist ourselves if that saves you a thread.

  4. On the day

    The consort arrives the day before for engagements abroad, rehearses in the building, and reports to whoever you nominate on site. Nobody needs to find us a green room or a power socket.

For venue and estate teams

A consort makes fewer demands on a building than almost any other kind of live music. Unaccompanied singing needs no stage, no power, no PA and no piano, and it leaves no rig to strike afterwards. In a stone building it needs no amplification at all.

What matters instead is where the singers stand and what the room does to the sound. A chancel, a gallery or the west end of a church all work. A ballroom with a carpeted floor and soft furnishings absorbs sound a chapel would carry, and an outdoor terrace gives nothing back at all, so both usually want more voices than a stone room would. Send us dimensions and a photograph and we will tell you what we would recommend before you quote it to a client.

The other half of the question is what the singers are competing with. A ceremony is silent, so the building decides the number. A drinks reception is not: unamplified voices have to carry over the room, and the noise a room makes rises with the number of people in it. A party that wanted eight voices for the ceremony can want twelve for the reception in the same building, and it is worth pricing both rather than assuming one figure covers the day.

If you keep a preferred-supplier list, we are glad to go on it and to hold whatever paperwork your compliance process needs on file.

Engagements abroad

We travel from London across Europe and the Mediterranean, to the Caribbean and the Americas, and to the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and South Africa. The variables a planner will care about — lead times, work permits for paid performers, what the local rite expects to hear sung, and what a room with no organ does to the voicing — differ by country, and our country guides set them out one at a time.

The one that catches people out is the United States, where paid performance needs a visa petition rather than a flight booking, on a lead time measured in months. If a client is considering a wedding there, raise it early and we will tell you what the calendar allows.

Trade questions

What do you need from us, and by when?

The date, the venue and the running order as soon as they exist, even in draft. Everything else can follow. Six to twelve months is the usual lead time for Europe; the United States needs far longer because paid performance there runs through a visa petition. If a date is closer than that, ask anyway. A free Saturday is a free Saturday.

Do you carry insurance and provide method statements?

We hold public liability insurance, and we provide risk assessments and method statements on request. Venues that need a supplier pack before they will confirm can have one; tell us what your compliance team asks for and we will send it in their format rather than ours.

Will the consort sign a confidentiality agreement?

Yes. We do not name clients, publish photographs, or release recordings from a private engagement without permission, and every singer on the engagement signs the same agreement, including a deputy brought in at short notice.

What does the consort need from the venue?

Room to stand where the guests can hear them, which in a church usually means the chancel, a gallery or the west end. No stage, no PA, no piano. For a ballroom, a terrace or a marquee, send us the dimensions and tell us whether the floor is carpeted: a soft room absorbs sound a chapel would carry, and that changes the number of singers we recommend.

Who do you invoice — the couple, the agency, or the venue?

In pounds sterling, euros or US dollars, to whichever entity you nominate: the couple, your agency, or the venue. Deposit and balance terms are set out in the booking agreement before anything is confirmed. Alma Consort Ltd is not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added to our invoices.

Can we set up a standing arrangement?

Yes, and it is worth doing if you expect to bring us more than one engagement. A standing arrangement means we hold your compliance paperwork on file, quote from a known baseline, and give your dates first refusal against general enquiries. Tell us about your events and we will set it up.

Enquire

Tell us about the engagement, or about the events you handle in general if you are looking to set up a standing arrangement.

Fields marked * are required.