Category: Concerts

Our final concert of this season is on Saturday 6 July 2024 at 3pm in the newly remodelled St Peter’s Church, St Albans.

Take a journey to France through music, wine and food.

Thinking of famous French composers, Debussy comes near the top, with Ravel, Fauré and Saint-Saёns close behind. We’ve got all of those in this French choral celebration spanning the romantic era to post impressionism.

Saint-Saёns sets us in the romantic era with a beautiful piece Calme des Nuits, short but full of expression as the piece fades away into the night. Then a few decades on we have a change of mood with Fauré, whose refined and gentle music shaped the course of modern French music paving the way for Debussy and Ravel as key impressionist composers. In this concert we sing Trois Chansons from both of these composers set to very different themes, one a set of medieval poems by Charles d’Orléans and the other a reaction to the horrors of WWI.

Also embracing impressionism was Lili Boulanger. She developed an innovative harmonic language and uses this to good effect in Les Sirѐnes, the story of the mythical siren. Our final composer, Gabriel Jackson, is not actually French but uses Baudelaire’s text La Musique and a setting of poems by Elizabeth Bishop to demonstrate the glorious and transformative power of music.

Soprano soloist: Fleur Moore-Bridger
Piano: Fingers Crossed

Programme:
Lili Boulanger    Les Sirens
Camille Saint-Saens Calme des Nuits
Ravel            Trois Chansons
Paul Ladmirault Variations sur des airs de Biniou trécorois (piano)
Gabriel Jackson La Musique

Interval

Debussy         Trois Chansons
Francis Poulenc Suite for Piano (piano)
Lili Boulanger    Hymne au soleil
Gabriel Faure Cantique de Jean Racine

A full programme booklet will be available on the door.

Please join us at the back of the church for nibbles and drinks post concert.

Tickets available in advance or on the door, please book ahead to avoid disappointment.

St Albans Chamber Choir

St Peter’s Church

St Peter’s Street, St Albans, AL1 3HG

Saturday 6 July 2024

3pm

Kids sing-along in St Albans (bring a grown-up), 3pm

Homewood Road United Reformed Church, St Albans, AL1 4BH

A very fun programme that will encourage youngsters to join in – we will have some shakers and organise some rounds singing, call-and-response, and other fun things.

Songs to include:
Revolting Children from Matilda,
Teddy Bears Picnic,
Mermaid,
Tequila Samba,
I do like to be beside the seaside
Hakuna Matata from The Lion King.

45 minutes, plus some cake and squash. Children to be accompanied by an adult.

Tickets £3 available in advance or on the door. Please do book ahead to avoid disappointment.

Summer Serenade, 7:30pm, Walkern

St Mary’s Church, Church End, Walkern, Herts, SG2 7PB

Programme may include:
Stanford – Magnificat
Ola Gjeilo – Unicornis Captivatur
Debussy – Trois Chansons
Ravel – Trois Chansons
Saint Saens – Calme des Nuits
plus some youngsters favourites.

Entry free – retiring collection in aid of Friend’s of St Mary’s and SACC.

The Mass in B minor (German: h-Moll-Messe), BWV 232, is an extended setting of the Mass ordinary by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composition was completed in 1749, the year before the composer’s death, and was to a large extent based on earlier work, such as a Sanctus Bach had composed in 1724.

As usual for its time, the composition is formatted as a Neapolitan mass, consisting of a succession of choral movements with a broad orchestral accompaniment, and sections in which a more limited group of instrumentalists accompanies one or more vocal soloists. The performance time will be around two hours.

We will be performing this piece with a period instrument band, “Concentus Verulamium”, made up of some of the finest players in the London area, and using the Barenreiter edition performing at Baroque pitch.

We also have a young team of soloists, a couple of whom studied with Robert Holingworth, director of I Fagiolini, on the esteemed Early Music Course at York University.
Ellie Bray – Soprano
Nina Vinther – Soprano 2
Dominic Bevan – Tenor
Edward Day – Bass

Please join us at the back of the church for nibbles and drinks post concert.

A full programme booklet will be available on the door.

St Albans Chamber Choir

St Saviour’s Church

Sandpit Lane, St Albans, AL1 4DF

Saturday 27 April 2024

7:30pm

The programme for this performance will include Poulenc Figure Humaine and Fauré Requiem.

A note taken in interview with our Musical Director:

“Poulenc Figure Humaine is one of the great pieces of the 20th century, and it’s even more extraordinary that it was composed in 1943 in occupied France, and whether it’s capturing a sense of despair but the hope as well of what was going on, what life must have been like in France at that time, but it contains so many beautiful moments of music and then some of real terror. And then this incredible finale, which is Liberté, and it’s like a chance to express that desire to be free in the midst of occupation, which is quite extraordinary.

And coupled with that, the one of the great requiems of all time. Not a loud bombastic piece, but a piece much more about hope and light Fauré’s Requiem, which is just such a beautiful piece of music of such hope. And I know for so many people it’s one of the top requiems with that incredibly beautiful finale In Paradisum, where the sound just floats as if heavenward. And it’s amazing how it creates this effect at the very end of it, almost having left the Earth, with the bassist singing the fifth of the chord and not the root of the chord so the music is suspended in the air.” – John Gibbons

This concert falls on Remembrance weekend and pays homage to all those who have served their country in times of conflict.

Performed by the BBC Singers at this year’s Proms Poulenc’s Figure Humaine is described as ‘one of the most striking works of contemporary choral music’. Completed in 1943 during the Nazi Occupation of France, the work was based on anti-war poems written by Paul Éluard and completed in just 6 weeks.

Scored for 2 six-part choirs, the Cantata describes the misery and terror of conflict using breath-taking and often complex musical variety and expression, culminating in a climactic hymn to freedom.

In contrast to the dramatic and passionate anti-war masterpiece, we turn to the calmer but equally influential French choral work Fauré’s Requiem. Said to have composed it for pleasure and not as a tribute to his Father’s death, Fauré maintains a positive and comforting mood, focusing the work on redemption and the entrance to heaven, rather than the oppression of death. The piece was even played at his own funeral in 1924.

We are joined by members of Ealing Symphony Orchestra and Bass-Baritone Andrew Jarvis whose credits include singing at the Royal Opera House and duets with Katherine Jenkins at the Royal Albert Hall annual Festival of Remembrance.

Please join us at the back of the church for nibbles and drinks post concert.

A full programme booklet will be available on the door.

St Albans Chamber Choir

St Saviour’s Church

Sandpit Lane, St Albans, AL1 4DF

Saturday 11 November 2023

7:30pm

This concert takes us away from sacred choral works and delves into a world of folksongs, love songs, a unicorn, a robin and The Beatles!

Full of drama and character, Who killed Cock Robin?, by the English composer Jonathan Dove, takes the 18th century rhyme and inventively retells the witty story. The Beatles also gets a shake up with And I love her, Yesterday and Let it be set for choir by our own conductor John Gibbons.

An exception amongst the mainly English compositions in this concert is Unicornis Captivatur by Ola Gjeilo, a Norwegian composer. This piece, written in 2001, was inspired by a compilation of medieval chants found in a monastery. Ola explains, “I was greatly inspired by the colourful and powerful symbolism and just the sheer drama, joy and sense of triumph… with a wild medieval Latin text that includes a unicorn, lion, and a crocodile.”

Even the weather, the most quintessentially English of topics, is sung about in Bob Chilcott’s energetic and quirky piece, Weather Report.

Please join us after the concert for summer refreshments in the hall and garden.

St Albans Chamber Choir

St Saviour’s Church

Sandpit Lane, St Albans, AL1 4DF

Sunday 2 July 2023

2:00pm