Enkelit is a small, upper-voice choir formed in 2003 primarily to sing the beautiful a cappella music of Finland. The group take its name from the choral piece which inspired their creation; Enkelit (Finnish for 'angels') by Tellu Turkka. Their repertoire is very contemporary, mostly written in the last twenty years, reflecting the renaissance in Finnish choral music.

 

The group was founded in 2003 by Richard Pomfret, who first encountered Finnish choral music while working with his youth choir, Pongos. The attraction of this haunting music led to two Pongos tours to Finland, and a number of personal visits to the Tampere Vocal Music Festival. There, in 2001, he heard the piece Enkelit performed by Fiori, an ensemble of seven singers for whom it was originally written. Inspired by this, Richard became determined to form a group in Britain to perform both this piece and the wealth of a cappella upper-voice choral music currently being written in Finland.

 

A visit of Fiori to York in 2003 provided an opportunity to recruit interested singers from the audience, and with a handful of singers from the Newcastle area, the group Enkelit was born, performing its first concert in Penrith in 2004. The group has since performed all over the north of England, as well as making two visits to Tampere in Finland and, most recently, at Edinburgh Fringe festival.