Our Next Concert

Originals by: Dowland, Henry VIII, Morley, Edwards & Weelkes.

Premiere of six new settings by Jonathan Berkahn.

And other delights.

Musical Director: Ingrid Schoenfeld

Accompanist: Jonathan Berkahn

Come hear classic madrigals, freshly reset by renowned choral composer Jonathan Berkahn, combined with a selection of other favourites, such as the beautiful chorale “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” in its second life as Paul Simon’s famous “American Tune.”

The concert will be at
7:30pm on Saturday 19 November 2022 
at Wesley Methodist Church
75 Taranaki Street
Wellington

Tickets are $25.00

Children are free when accompanied by an adult

Click here for the Programme Booklet PDF

Click the link below or scan the QR code to order your tickets at Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/recreated-music-old-new-reimagined-reinvented-tickets-442526397367

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Festival Singers 2022 plans

Thanks for visiting our website.

If you are looking for a choir to sing with in 2022 we’d love hear from you.
Contact details are at the bottom of the page.

Covid Policy

• If you are unwell, please don’t come to choir rehearsals or events.
• Wearing a mask is strongly recommended.

We will review this policy as the Covid situation changes.

Programme for the rest of 2022

Angels Dancing – Choral Masterworks: Concert with the choir of  St. Mary of the Angels, 17 Boulcott Street – 7:30pm 27 August 2022

Programme will include: Zadok the Priest, Parry’s I Was Glad, Allegri’s Miserere, Stanford’s Three Latin Motets, and a wide range of composers from Allegri to Britten. 

“Rewritten” concert. October / November 2022

We’ll sing music that’s been used in one context and then rewritten for another, e.g. JS Bach’s Passion Chorale that Paul Simon rewrote as American Tune. 

December 2022

• We plan to sing at the Seatoun Carols event at St Christopher’s that fundraises for the Wellington City Mission.
• We may perform a Christmas concert
• We may sing at some rest-homes

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Documentary Video about making the recording of A Hopkins Gloria

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Composer’s note:

A Hopkins Gloria was initially premiered at a concert that included two other Glorias, by Vivaldi and by John Rutter. In the back of my mind were Classical and Baroque “cantata-masses” like Vivaldi’s Gloria, where each fragment of the (Latin) text is spun out into a complete movement. I was tempted in this direction, but decided at length to set the text in English (mostly the version in A New Zealand Prayer Book) – partly because most of the rest of the concert was in Latin. And as soon as I had made that decision, I felt that I couldn’t repeat each clause indefinitely, treating them as tokens to fill out abstract musical designs, but had to regard the text (or at least larger sections of it) as meaningful wholes.

Then I had an idea. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty (“Glory be to God for dappled things…”) came into my head, which I had attempted without success to set at various times over the last twenty-five years. I thought of ‘inhabiting’ this canonical text with other, related texts (“and the birds of the air shall make their homes in its branches…”). It occurred to me that one of Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets, written out of his blackest depression, could make a useful counterpoint to the Agnus Dei sections; then I wondered if the second half of his “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection” might work as a way of bringing about a return to the joyful mood of the whole.

So there is a kind of spiritual drama, a dark night of the soul, at the heart of the piece. And it may be worth saying that the emotional dynamic of this section – the attempt to soothe and manage dark imaginings in the early hours of the morning by repetition of the Agnus Dei prayer – is, quite literally, something that has been a regular part of my spiritual life. I do believe, somehow, that joy will have the final word; but suffering and resurrection have to happen first.

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  For more information, please contact:

• Ingrid Schoenfeld (Musical Director)
  ingrid.s@outlook.co.nz, 027 240 6669  or

   

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• Philip Garside (Secretary)
  books@pgpl.co.nz  475 8855

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Site designed and maintained by Philip Garside: www.pgpl.co.nz

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