Britten
St Nicolas Concert – Tenor Soloist
Nick Hawker – Tenor
Nick Hawker performs as St Nicolas himself in our forthcoming concert on Saturday 25 November at St Matthias’ Church, Wellswood, Torquay. In addition, he will perform in the beautiful Bach Cantata, ‘Sleepers, Wake!’ – a treat to look forward to.
Nicholas began his musical education as a chorister at St Alphege, Solihull. He later read music at Birmingham University, eventually winning a postgraduate scholarship to complete an MPhil thesis on the music of Edward Elgar. Since then he has
edited manuscripts linked with the composition of Elgar’s The Apostles which have now been published by the Elgar Society.
Nicholas Hawker is increasingly in demand as a soloist throughout the South West and further afield. In 2003 Nicholas moved to Truro, Cornwall to take up a choral scholarship with Truro Cathedral Choir. As a lay vicar in Truro Cathedral Choir he has toured throughout Europe, made numerous recordings on the Regent and Lammas record labels and appeared as a soloist on BBC radio and television. He previously sang with the choir of Birmingham Cathedral and has recently performed, recorded and toured with the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge.
Nicholas’ recital repertoire includes the song-cycles Britten’s Winter Words, Schubert’s Winterresie and Schumann’s Dichterliebe as well as other songs by Britten, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Quilter, Gurney, Elgar, Ireland, Schubert and Schumann. In opera Nicholas has appeared with Birmingham Festival Opera in Shostakovich Moskva Cheremushki and with Duchy Opera in Puccini Madame Butterfly and Mozart The Magic Flute. In 2009 he appeared with Duchy Opera in the premiere of Paul Drayton’s The Hanging Oak.
To hear Nick sing join us on Saturday 25 November at the earlier time of 7pm.
Tickets are available priced £12 for the concert with a separate ticket of £4.00 for the finger buffet. As usual children and students under 19 are welcome to the concert free of charge but will require a finger buffet ticket at £4.00. Tickets can be obtained from Choir Members, online and of course, on the door. Please note that because we have to cater we are asking people to book tickets no later than Saturday 18 November. There may possibly be extra buffet tickets available on the night but first come, first served as they say.
#sdevonchoirconcert
To buy tickets now please use our secure online booking system
St Nicolas Concert Soloist
Elinor Chapman
Our soprano soloist for our concert on 25 November at St Matthias’ Church, Wellswood, Torquay is the sublime singer, Elinor Chapman.
Elinor graduated with a degree in Law with French before taking a post-graduate diploma in performance and vocal studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Since then she has performed many operatic roles including Despina (Cosi), Oscar (Ballo in Maschera),
Adele (Fledermaus), Mercedes (Carmen) and Blonde (Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail) for
companies including Kentish Opera and Unexpected Opera. For Duchy Opera Elinor has played Malwina in Marschner’s The Vampire and Adina in Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love.
She has twice toured as a soloist with the Kent Sinfonia to China and has given concerts and recitals as far afield as New Zealand.
Oratorio work includes Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Judas Maccabbeus, Haydn’s The Seasons, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate and Faure’s Requiem. Future engagements include Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Little Organ Mass and Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.
To hear Elinor perform in Bach’s ‘Sleepers, Wake!’ and ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’ from Handel’s Samson Oratorio join us on Saturday 25 November at the earlier time of 7pm.
Tickets are available priced £12 for the concert with a separate ticket of £4.00 for the finger buffet. As usual children and students under 19 are welcome to the concert free of charge but will require a finger buffet ticket at £4.00. Tickets can be obtained from Choir Members, online and of course on the door. Please note that because we have to cater we are asking people to book tickets no later than Saturday 18 November. There may possibly be extra buffet tickets available on the night but first come, first served as they say.
#sdevonchoirconcert
To buy tickets now please use our secure online booking system
Will the real Father Christmas please stand up
St Nicolas, the real Father Christmas
Excitement builds in the minds of small children as Christmas Eve approaches and Santa leaves presents for them but what do we know of this magical person? Who is he? Who was he?
The origin of Father Christmas, or to give him his proper name, St Nicolas, is shrouded in the mists of time. All we know of him is largely down to a writer from the 9th century giving an account of a figure who lived some 500 years before, one Nicolas of Myra.
Nicolas of Myra was reputed to have performed a number of kindly, indeed saintly, acts including the restoration to life of children whom he raised from the dead, the rescues of three sisters destined for a life of misery and prostitution, three men from an unjust death and three drowning sailors off the coast of Turkey. You can see the influence of the holy number three in these accounts.
His diverse activities have earned him the patronage of unmarried girls, pawnbrokers, merchants, perfumiers and apothecaries as well as the modern fame in which he is now held.
At our concert on 25 November we will sing of the life of St Nicolas, including the restoration to life of the children. In the Britten Cantata the children are three small boys, Timothy, Mark and John, whose parents are in anguish at their disappearance. Nicolas realises that the boys have been pickled in brine by an unscrupulous butcher and supplied as meat to a landlord in the famine stricken land. He restores them to life and you will hear them in the concert as their parts are sung by three choristers from Exeter Cathedral.
Forget Strictly, catch up on iPlayer, and come out for an evening of choral entertainment with us as we sing St Nicolas and the famous Bach Cantata BMV140 Sleepers, Wake! and if you would like to join us for a finger buffet afterwards then be quick and buy tickets for that too – the deadline is Saturday 18 November (for catering purposes) but concert tickets will be available on the door on the night.
Tickets are available online click here
For more information about the concert click here – do join us.
