St Albans Chamber Choir presents Good Vibrations, a summer programme celebrating American music from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway to the San Juan Islands and California. The choir will be joined by a jazz band to perform arrangements of popular songs from the Great American Songbook and beyond, and works by Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen and George Shearing.
Arrangements of popular American songs will include Cole Porter’s Miss Otis Regrets, Jerome Kern’s The Way You Look Tonight, in arrangements by John Rutter, the choir’s own Nicholas Hare, and others. The choir will also perform a medley of hits by The Beach Boys.
Pieces by Eric Whitacre will include Seal Lullaby, composed in 2000, a setting of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. A beautiful piece, it is a gentle, serene flowing depiction of a mother seal singing a lullaby to her pup, and its lush texture is characteristic of Whitacre’s style.
Morten Lauridsen’s Les Chansons des roses was completed in 1993, and is a setting of the poems, ‘Les Roses’, by Rainer Maria Rilke. Structured in five movements, the work’s rich harmonies and lyrical melodies enhance the light and playful French poems creating a sense of serenity and transcendence.
Songs and Sonnets was composed by George Shearing and premiered in Illinois in 1999. It is a collection of settings of Shakespeare songs and sonnets, which merges the composer’s English musical roots with his American jazz influence to delightful effect.
Please join us for a toe-tapping afternoon.
The programme may vary as we work to bring you the best experience:
| Shakespeare Sonnets – Live with me and be my love – Spring | George Shearing |
| Les Chansons des Roses | Morten Lauridsen |
| Shakespeare Sonnets – When daffodils begin to peer – It was a lover and his lass | George Shearing |
| Miss Otis regrets | Cole Porter |
| Goodnight Sweetheart | Calvin Carter & James Hudson |
| The Bare Necessities | Terry Gilkyson (arr. Nicholas Hare) |
– Interval –
| Ol’ Man River | Jerome Kern (arr. Nicholas Hare) |
| Shakespeare Sonnets – Who is Silvia? – Fie on sinful fantasy – Hey, ho, the wind and the rain | George Shearing |
| Seal Lullaby | Eric Whitacre |
| Over the rainbow | Harold Arden (arr. Nicholas Hare) |
| I’m beginning to see the Light | Duke Ellington (arr, Berry Rice) |
| The Way you look tonight | Jerome Kern (arr John Rutter) |
| Good Vibrations – A Beach Boys Medley | Beach Boys (arr, John Gibbons) |
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 4 July 2026 |
| 5pm |