Latest Event Updates
Proposed trip to Holland
The Choir is proposing a trip to Holland following the visit by the Grootkoor. The organiser, Nan van Groenigen, has been in touch and the initial outline of the trip, in his words, is shown below. Please note the costs are approximate and do not include travel/ferry crossing. The date proposed for the trip is the first weekend in August, 2-6th, 2018. Further details will be made available once we have the travel costs.
Choir trip to The Netherlands 2018
Thursday
Departure on Thursday 2 August 2018 towards Harwich. In Harwich you can take the night boat to Hoek van Holland where you will arrive on Friday morning. If you prefer to travel by day you could also drive to Colcester, stay there for a night in a hotel and take the boat on Friday morning to travel to The Netherlands. This will be a bit more expensive since you need to have an extra night in a hotel and the trip in The Netherlands will be 1 day longer and therefore more pricey.
Friday
You will arive in Hoek van Holland at 09.00 in the morning and you will have a 30 minute travel towards Delft. A beautiful city with old buildings, amazing shops and a touristic city center. Your choir members can walk through the city and have lunch here. In the afternoon you will go to a hotel on the outskirts of Amsterdam. This 4 star hotel has decent rooms and a marvelous restaurant. You can choose to stay in the hotel and have a shared dinner at night. Or you could choose to have a dinner at the late afternoon and have a concert at night.
Saturday
After breakfast we go to Amsterdam city. Your choir members can enjoy the city. Go to one of the many museums Amsterdam has and after we will take a traditional boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam. Everyone will take care of his/her own meals during this day. After dinnertime we will walk towards the Noorderkerk where you will be performing a concert at night. After this concert you can all have a drink in one of the restaurants or bars in the area. Afterwards we will go to the hotel again.
Sunday
After a delicious breakfast we will drive by bus to Schevening where you can have another touristic day with each other. Especially in the months May until September this city is the place to be. The shops are opened and the boulevard and beach have many restaurants, bars and beach clubs. In the late afternoon you will go to Hoek van Holland (40 minutes) again where you take the nightboat towards Harwich.
Monday
You will arrive at Harwich at 9.00 in the morning and the bus will take you to back home where you will arive at the late afternoon.
Price: €215,– p.p.
Including:
• 2 night stay in a 4 star hotel for 2 people in 1 room
• 2 days breakfast buffet
• Tourleader from the start in Hoek van Holland until departure
• Tourist tax
• 2 concerts in different churches
• A concert in Scheveningen if the weather allowes it
• Visit to Delft
• Cozy gatherings after the concert
Excluding:
• Own expenses during the trip
• Lunch and dinner
• Boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam, €11,– p.p.
• 1 room surcharge for staying in a single room, €95,-
Sing with Willcocks
Jonathan Willcocks will be conducting a choral workshop on Saturday 30th September hosted by the Plymouth Philharmonic Choir at Meade King Hall, Plymouth College.
Tickets are £18 and the booking form can be downloaded by clicking this link.
Willcocks-workshop-leaflet (2 pages) (1)
Further information can be obtained from Pauline Cornish 01752 346563
When daffodils by George Shearing and William Shakespeare
As part of our concert programme Celebrating Summer, we sang a pretty little number celebrating Spring – well, why not? Short and sweet, here is Shakespeare set to music.
What do you think of it?
The Two Moors Festival
We have been contacted by Sarah Muirhead of The Two Moors Festival who are recruiting singers for a Two Moors Festival Chorus to sing the Creation on Saturday 21 October at Tiverton.
If you are interested and would like to take part please contact
Sarah Muirhead: e-mail admin@thetwomoorsfestival.co.uk mob. 07585941215
There is more information about the Two Moors Festival HERE
Rutter doesnt melt
Rutter doesn’t melt
This term Chorally Confused has been learning two pieces by John Rutter and has been promoted to the second sopranos. We say promoted because she has been sent to the back row to help bolster what is often a somewhat neglected soprano area. Sopranos love to sing high notes, the higher the better, and singing an under part is not necessarily what they aspire to.
As usual Chorally Confused has discovered the Rutter Requiem and Magnificat have their challenges and more so because she doesn’t read music. On this occasion, since she is singing a harmonising part rather than picking out the melody, she has to follow a different line of music and ignore what the first sopranos are singing. Added to this challenge is that the fact that John Rutter has written some harmonies that are tricky to pitch and yet sound sublime when you hear them.
During the first rehearsal break we noticed that she was sitting quietly and looking rather spaced out. “Are you OK?” we enquired gently.
“Yes,” she replied, “It’s just that my brain is tired with trying to pick out the right notes and I am cross-eyed with trying to follow the music!”
“That’s quite normal,” we responded cheerily, “the more you do it the easier it becomes.” Chorally Confused smiled weakly. “Oh good.” she said.
We checked in with her again recently. “How’s it going?” we asked.
“Well, I think it’s a case of Rutter doesn’t melt in the mouth when you are trying to learn it.” she smiled.
“You like it then?”
“Oh yes,” she replied ” but I think the audience definitely has the easy part. All they have to do is let Rutter melt in their ears!”
If you would like to let Rutter melt in your ears why not join us at our spring concert Rejoice with Rutter at Central Church, Tor Hill Road, Torquay at 7.30pm on Saturday 8th April, 2017. For all the information you need to buy tickets in advance please click here. Tickets are also available on the door price £12. Students 19 and under are free of charge.
Fifty years of singing
How many years?
Pam Fenton was recently awarded a Long Service Certificate for her amazing 50 years of membership and singing in the South Devon Choir. Sally Laird, the Choir’s Chairperson, presented Pam her Certificate and a basket of spring flowers at the AGM in January 2017. Even though it seems a bit of an effort to turn out in the wind, rain, snow and fog on a winter’s evening to attend rehearsals the effort is always rewarded with a feeling of well being after singing and meeting old friends. Well done Pam, we applaud you.
Christus Natus Est!
Joyous Christmas Singing
Mobile phone technology being what it is now, a member of our audience has supplied us with this recording of the last part of Cecelia McDowall’s lovely Christmas Cantata, “Christus Natus Est!” We hope it will enjoyed once again by those who attended the concert and for the first time by those who didn’t.
Happy Christmas, to one and all.
Handel and his Messiah
Handel was born in Saxony in 1685, the same year that J.S. Bach was born in Thuringia, though the two were destined never to meet. Whereas Bach remained in North Germany for the whole of his life, writing a vast amount of choral and instrumental music for his church and court employers, Handel travelled widely, unencumbered with family responsibilities, first to Italy, where he learned the art of opera and adopted the Italian style of writing which coloured his sub-sequent compositions.
On his return, he became Director of Music to the Elector of Hanover, but soon left for England, where he immersed himself in the flourishing operatic scene. His former employer followed him to London in 1714, where he was crowned King George I. It was for him that Handel wrote his famous ‘Water Music’ in 1717.
Handel now moved in the highest circles, becoming Musical Director to the Duke of Chandos and travelling abroad to engage singers for his fourteen new operas. In 1727 he wrote four anthems for the coronation of George II, including ‘Zadok the Priest’, which has been sung at every British coronation since then.
The popularity of Italian-style operas began to wane in England and Handel, somewhat unwillingly, turned his attention to the composition of dramatic oratorios, which proved immensely popular with the English public, thereby sustaining him through the ill-health and eventual blindness which blighted his later years. He died at the age of 74 and was buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey. Beethoven later said of him, “Go and learn of him how to achieve great effects with simple means”; and Haydn, hearing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in Westminster Abbey at the great Handelian Festival of 1791, rose to his feet with the crowd, wept, and exclaimed, “He is the master of us all.”
‘Messiah’, composed between 22nd August and 14th September 1741, with a libretto selected from scriptures by Charles Jennens, was first performed in Dublin on 13th April 1742, since when it has remained at the forefront of the choral repertoire, both at home and abroad.
South Devon Choir will sing Part 1, the Advent/Christmas section of this mighty work on Saturday 10 December 2016 at Central Church, Tor Hill Road, Torquay. The performance starts at 7.30pm and tickets are available on the door at a cost of £12. The Choir will also perform Lo! Star Led Chiefs by Dr Crotch, Christus Natus Est! by the contemporary composer Cecelia McDowall and there will be Christmas carols for all to sing. In addition there will be two special solos from the unfinished oratorio ‘Christus’ by Mendelssohn. With professional soloists and organist Simon Dunbavand and conducted by John Hobbs the evening promises to be full of wonderful harmonies and Christmas spirit.
For further information and online tickets click Hallelujah! It’s Christmas!
#sdchoirchristmas
Got a Handel on it now?
Chorally Confused has been getting along just fine singing with the South Devon Choir. Despite her relative inexperience and near non-existent music reading skills enthusiasm and determination have paid dividends and when it was announced that the Choir would be singing Part 1 of Handel’s Messiah Chorally Confused thought to herself
“No problem. I’ve heard it so many times, it will be a doddle to learn. After Verdi’s Requiem, how hard can it be?”
At the first practice Chorally Confused discovered that she was the only one, apparently, who had never sung Messiah before. Gasps of amazement at her inexperience were heard – then she noticed that she was not the only one who had put up her hand – others, slowly were admitting that they, too, had never sung this piece before. The conductor smiled cheerily and the rehearsal started.
It’s funny how, no matter how many times you may, or may not, have sung a piece of music there is always something new to be discovered, or some passage that you never sang quite correctly. For Chorally Confused it has been a whole new experience – how to sing something correctly when you have only heard it sung before and how to pack an awful lot of notes into a very short space of time. When asked what she thought of it after the first rehearsal she was heard to observe, “I think Handel must have been in a hurry when he wrote this and he didn’t have to try singing it himself.” Well, she was right in her first observation – the whole work was written in a matter of three to four weeks, so perhaps Handel was in a hurry.
Chorally Confused has also been observed wandering round muttering to herself. We discovered that this was not muttering but her practising the long runs of notes as suggested – pa-pa-pa-pa.
Providing she, and the rest of the Choir, remember to sing the words, this will have been a very helpful exercise.
By last week’s rehearsal Chorally Confused admitted that she “Had a Handel on it, thanks”. We are pleased for her.
If you would like to come along and hear the Choir sing on Saturday 10 December at 7.30pm at Central Church, Torquay , and of course hear if Chorally Confused really has got a handle on the notes and necessarily in the right order, then you can buy tickets online https://southdevonchoir.org/hallelujah-its-christmas/ or on the door. Tickets cost £12 (please note a booking fee applies online). Alternatively you can check out our Tickets page for further information.
Please do come.
#sdchoirchristmas #sdcchristmas
Sing in a choir for health
Once singing in a choir was reserved for church on Sundays but in the last few years choral singing has become more and more popular. Gareth Malone and his series The Choir and other reality TV shows, such as the X Factor, have inspired people to find their voice and find a choir to sing in. In fact, it is now estimated that 2.8 million people in Briton take part in a choir or singing group and many more probably sing solo in the shower, the kitchen and the car as they go about their daily business. Music is a mood influencer and we have only to look at the amount of music written over centuries to see its powerful effects.
What’s more, it has been shown that if you join a choir you will feel part of a group more quickly than many other activities. There is something special about singing, revealed in an October 2015 research project undertaken by The Royal Society which indicates that singing may be an evolutionary development that enables human beings to bond more quickly in social situations.
Singing can even act as a pain-killer probably due to the release of endorphins and can create a feeling of well-being, especially when singing as part of a group. The harmonious activity acts to synchronise us together and creating a beautiful sound lifts the spirits.
We hope that this will have convinced you that a choir is worthwhile joining for all its beneficial effects. Come along and try for yourself; the Choir resumes singing in September when we shall be practising the fantastic Messiah
Picture from https://www.flickr.com/photos/8176740@N05/4703393210/in/photolist-8aC7Wo-8ayTRB-8aC9nm-8aySuX-7YAzYS-7YAAKq-7YAAmh-7YAzBu
SOUTH DEVON CHOIR 