Our next concert

Gorgeous choral music around a theme of night

Featuring:

• Seek Him That Maketh the Seven Stars by Jonathan Dove
• Nocturnes (including Sure on this Shining Night) by Morten Lauridsen, and
• Music by Jonathan Berkahn

Our soprano soloist is Rowena Simpson

Join us for an enchanted starlit experience celebrating the music of the night.

Anything but sleepy, this concert features the show-stopping forces of Dove, Mendelssohn, Lauridsen, Haydn, and Berkahn.

Prepare for choral magic, organ virtuosity, and the luminous clarity of soprano soloist Rowena Simpson’s remarkable voice.

$25

Tickets also available from choir members.
Limited door sales – Cash only.

Click to Download the Programme Booklet

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

Tickets for the Livestream are just $10 each. If you would like to pay more, please buy more tickets. Book on Eventbrite here: https://tinyurl.com/5n7xybyh

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 17 May 2022.)

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.

Thank you.

---

 

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

• You must present a valid Vaccine Pass to attend choir rehearsals and events.
• 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 remainder of 2022

Starlit Night concert: 7:30pm Saturday 14 May 2022 at St Peters on Willis (details above)

Includes: Seek Him That Maketh the Seven Stars by Jonathan Dove, and Nocturnes by Lauridsen.

Featuring: Soprano Rowena Simpson

Concert with the choir of  St. Mary of the Angels, 17 Boulcott Street – 5 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 Josquin to Britten. 

A mid-year workshop

“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

---

Our Last Concert

Ceremony of Carols Christmas concert

7:00pm Saturday 20 Nov. 2021
St John’s on the Hill, Johnsonville

Benjamin Britten’s stunning
Ceremony of Carols for choir and harp
featuring Michelle Velvin harpist.

We also performed a sparkling selection of traditional and contemporary Christmas music, by Gardner, Stopford, Lauridsen and new works by Jonathan Berkahn.

Programme Booklet

Click here to download a PDF
of the programme booklet for the concert

___________

---

 

Documentary Video about making the recording of A Hopkins Gloria

_____________

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.

• ---

  For more information, please contact:

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

   

  ---

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

---

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

Copyright Festival Singers 2009-2022