Handel
Our choir sing at Exeter Cathedral
Members of South Devon Choir were thrilled to be invited to perform at Exeter Cathedral for this year’s Festival of Remembrance, organised by the Royal British Legion, Devon.
The festival included a short concert featuring the choir as well as music by service bands, followed by the traditional Act of Remembrance and a procession of the many flags and standards of the British Legion, service associations and cadets.
“We were delighted to be able to take part in this important commemoratioin of the servoce and sadly the sacrifice of the many people who have taken part in past battles”, said Jill Stevens, Chair of the choir.
“The opportunity to perform in our county’s cathedral does not come very often. And this year’s event was particularly moving, as it was the 40th anniversary of the Falklands war.”
The choir sang a mixture of classical choral items by Faure, Mozart and Handel – many of them items already in rehearsal for their coming concert, Crown & Glory, being performed at St Matthias’ Church, Torquay on 26 November.
Jill said, “We were so pleased that we had a number of suitable pieces already prepared, such as the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ and ‘Zadok the Priest’ – and then, to sing them in that wonderfuf setting, with its fabulous organ and acoustics, was the icing on the cake!”
The choir is continuing to rehearse for their concert on 26 November, when they will be singing Mozart’s ‘Coronation Mass’ and some of Handel’s most loved choruses and arias, with professisonal soloists and a full orchestra.
Details of the concert and how to buy tickets can be found here.
St Nicolas-Julian Rippon
Julian Rippon – Bass
Julian Rippon treats us to the well-known solo ‘Mighty Lord’ by Bach from his famous ‘Christmas Oratorio’ 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!’ together with Elinor Chapman and Nick Hawker.
Julian is in constant demand as a soloist around the South West, performing in a wide range of choral and operatic works with many of the foremost groups in the region. He is also a full-time member of Exeter Cathedral Choir.
Julian began his singing career as a boy chorister with St Paul’s Cathedral Choir, and continued to sing regularly while an Engineering
undergraduate at Cambridge
University. He moved to Japan in 1990, and later to Shanghai,
returning to the UK in 2007. While in the Far East Julian appeared
frequently as soloist, both on the stage and in the concert hall.
His solo repertoire includes Monteverdi Vespers, Handel Messiah and Judas Maccabeus, J.S. Bach B
Minor Mass, St John Passion, St Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio, Mozart Requiem, Beet-hoven Symphony No. 9, Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle, Mendelssohn Elijah, Verdi Requiem, Brahms German Requiem, Stainer Crucifixion, Fauré Requiem, Mahler
Symphony No. 8, Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony and Fantasia on Christmas Carols, Carl Orff
Carmina Burana, Duruflé
Requiem, Britten War Requiem and Howard Goodall Requiem.
Julian recently performed in Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony and Britten’s War Requiem, and has a busy round of concerts leading up to Christmas, including Handel Messiah, Bach Magnificat, and Durulflé Requiem. He has also been invited to perform
Mahler’s ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’ (‘Songs of a Wayfarer’) in Sidmouth next spring.
To hear Julian 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 and 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 – 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
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
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SOUTH DEVON CHOIR 