The NFM Choir was formed in 2006 by Andrzej Kosendiak. Agnieszka Franków-Żelazny directed the ensemble from the beginning. Since the 2021/2022 season Lionel Sow has taken over as Artistic Director. The ensemble has quickly earned a strong reputation for its work in several genres, performing a cappella works as well as large-scale oratorios, opera and symphonic compositions. The choir has worked with such renowned conductors as Giovanni Antonini, Bob Chilcott, Iván Fischer, Jacek Kaspszyk, Stephen Layton, James MacMillan, Paul McCreesh, and Krzysztof Penderecki. They have performed more than 300 concerts, among others, at the Barbican Centre and Royal Albert Hall in London, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and the Philharmonie de Paris and Salle Pleyel in Paris.
The NFM Choir has frequently been invited to perform at international festivals such as the BBC Proms, International Ankara Music Festival, Gent Festival van Vlaanderen, Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy, Klarafestival, Serenade! Choral Festival, and Warsaw Autumn. The ensemble has worked with, among others, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort & Players, Il Giardino Armonico, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR). The core of the ensemble’s activity are world premieres of choral and vocal-instrumental works, including by such composers as K. Penderecki, A. Zubel, R. Panufnik, R. Augustyn, P. Łukaszewski, J. Wolfe, and B. Chilcott.
An important part of the NFM Choir’s discography is a series of recordings with Paul McCreesh released on his Winged Lion label and awarded prestigious awards: BBC Music Magazine Award 2012 in the Technical Excellence category (Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts), Diapason d’Or 2013 Mendelssohn’s Elijah), BBC Music Magazine Choral Award 2014 (Britten’s War Requiem). A cappella works performed by the NFM Choir feature on a disc with music by Bob Chilcott The Seeds of Stars (2012) and on three discs with Polish choral music: Words Painted with Sounds (2012), Folk Love (2014), and De profundis (2016); the latter won Fryderyk Award 2017 in the Album of the Year – Choral Music, Oratorio and Opera category. March 2017 saw the premiere of the album with The Seasons by Haydn, recorded with the participation of the NFM Choir under the baton of Paul McCreesh. 2018 saw the release of the Ubi caritas album, the premiere recording of the original version of Phantoms by Moniuszko (Fryderyk 2019 in the Album of the Year – Choral Music, Oratorio and Opera category) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, recorded with Giovanni Antonini. In 2019, an album recorded under the baton of Andrzej Kosendiak with works by Marcin Józef Żebrowski was released and later nominated for Fryderyk 2020 in the Album of the Year – Oratorio and Opera Music category.
