A Box of Birds:
Mozart’s Sparrow Mass & other avian delights

Featuring: Soprano • Rowena Simpson

Come hear a soaring collection of music inspired by birds and their song – including Mozart’s Sparrow Mass, Māori waiata, Renaissance madrigals, and lush contemporary works.

With the exquisite voice of soloist Rowena Simpson and a breath taking instrumental composition by Jonathan Berkahn, this is a concert not to be missed.

7:45pm Sunday 28 May 2023

Island Bay Presbyterian Church
88 The Parade Island Bay

Patrons who bought tickets for the
cancelled 13 May 2023 concert enter free.
Please just say at the door that you were at the cancelled concert.

We will also livestream video of the concert on our Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/FestivalSingers

(See below for Livestream details)

There will be limited new Door Sales available.
Cash only – no EFTPOS

Please note our ticket pricing:

• $25 single ticket
• 2 tickets $45 ($22.50 each)
• 3 or more tickets $20 each

Children enter free when accompanied by an adult.

Click here for the PDF
Programme booklet for the concert

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Patrons who bought tickets for the concert on 13 May 2023, but are unable to attend the rescheduled concert on 28 May, are welcome to view this Livestream Video without further payment.

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Everyone else…

Can’t make it to the concert in person – but would still like to support the choir?

You will be able to view our Livestream Video of the concert on our Facebook page, here: https://www.facebook.com/FestivalSingers

The video will be on the right hand of the Facebook page towards the top of the page (under the header photo of the choir singing in St Peters, Willis Street.)

We will start the video a few minutes before we start singing at 7.45pm, and will turn it off at the end of the first half. We will then restart the video just before the start of the second half.

Tickets for the Livestream are just $10 each. If you would like to pay more, please buy more tickets.

Buy your Livestream Tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/livestream-a-box-of-birds-rescheduled-concert-tickets-639222691277

Please note: This Livestream will be able to be viewed by the public without charge. So buying a Livestream ticket is a choice you can make to support the choir.

(The full video will be viewable for 3 days after the concert and you will be able to buy tickets as a donation until 31 May 2023.)

NB: We will stop the Livestream at the end of the first half of the concert, and resume it at the start of the second half.

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Come Sing with us in 2023

• Join us and expand your musical horizons
  
  
• Rehearsals are on Monday nights at 7-9pm from February to early December, at Newlands Christian Assembly, 126 Newlands Road, Newlands, Wellington
  
  
• You are welcome to attend any rehearsal
  
  
• There is free parking at the church and car pools operate from several areas
  
  
• Our Musical Director is Ingrid Schoenfeld, who is also a concert pianist. The choir has a bright future under her leadership
  
  
• Our Accompanist, composer Jonathan Berkahn, is skilled on the piano, organ, harpsichord, and accordion
  
  
• Joining is easy – no formal audition required. Come to 3 rehearsals without obligation
  
  
• We’re affordable. Annual membership subscriptions are set at the start of each year. We offer a reduced subscription for singers in the same household. And we have a discounted subscription for full time students
  
  
• To keep these rates low, we have one or two fundraisers a year which are easy to sell to our supporters
  
  
• We hold one or two choral workshops each year which are always well supported
  
  
• Each year we support a good cause by taking a donation / koha at our Christmas concert
  
  
• We also collaborate with other choirs and musical groups
  
  
• The choir sings a wide range of sacred and secular music, and per-forms 3 or 4 concerts each year
  
  
• We know you will make new friends in our supportive greater Wellington community choir 

If you have any questions, please contact:  

Ingrid Schoenfeld  (Musical Director)   ingrid.s@outlook.co.nz  027 240 6669  or Philip Garside  (Secretary)  books@pgpl.co.nz,   475 8855

Festival Singers 2023 programme

A Box of Birds concert – 7.00pm Saturday 13 May 2023 at Island Bay Presbyterian Church: 88 The Parade, Island Bay, Wellington.

Soloist Rowena Simpson.

Movie Fundraiser – June/July

Combined concert with St Mary of the Angels choir at St Mary’s – August 2023

Recording of new arrangements by Jonathan Berkahn of NZ Hymnbook Trust hymns/songs

Probably 14-15 October, at St James, Lower Hutt

Choir commitment is one day of recording.

Christmas Concert – A French Christmas – December 2023

Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio. Charpentier: Messe de minuit pour Noël (Both in Latin)

Possibly Johnsonville.

We may have a workshop/open rehearsal at the church and advertise it to/invite the local community.

Seatoun community Carols mid-Dec. 2022 at St Christopher’s, Seatoun.

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Our last workshop

 

Our Last 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

We performed 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.”

 

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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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