Southern Voices’ March concert – Hear my prayer

Southern Voices will be performing its next concert on 18 March – this time celebrating the work of two organists of the Chapel Royal, Henry Purcell and Christopher Tye.

This promises to be sublime early music in the fantastic acoustic of St Cross Church in Winchester. There will be a number of pieces from each composer reflecting the choice of the concert title (as well as the season). Highlights from Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) include I Was Glad, Hear my prayer and Remember not, Lord, our offences. Altogether a century earlier, we will be performing amongst other pieces of his, Christopher Tye’s (c1505 – 1573) Euge bone mass.

As usual, the concert will be conducted by Musical Director Katherine Dienes-Williams, with chamber organ accompaniment from Richard McVeigh. The concert starts at 7.30, with tickets priced at £16 (full) and £14 (concessions). Tickets can be purchased from the Cathedral Box Office.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

 

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A Baroque Christmas with Southern Voices

Come and join Southern Voices as we sing a Baroque Christmas in St Cross on 17 December!

This year our theme is baroque music with some fantastic carols and composers, ranging from Praetorius and Scheidt through to Bouzignac to Sweelink, via Rutter and Allain (those two not quite so baroque). And as usual, some more secular fare with Winter Wonderland and 12 days of Christmas (the latter hopefully not b-roke).

As ever, the concert will be directed by Katherine Dienes-Williams with Paul Provost at the organ.

Tickets: £16 (Concessions £14; children 17 and under, £5). and are available online and from the Winchester Cathedral Box Office (01962 857275).

Bubbles and Song – A Night at the Opera

Join us for a night of Bubbles and Song in Winchester on 5 March!

Southern Voices brings you a night at the opera full of memorable melodies which will leave you humming if not bringing your operatic voices fully out into the open!

Singing in Russian, French, German, Latin and Italian, familiar choruses will delight you, ranging from Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus’ from Lohengrin to March of the Toreadors from Bizet’s Carmen, Mascagni’s Easter Hymn to Verdi’s Chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco.

Ladies’ voices are heard in the Witches’ Chorus of Macbeth by Verdi, whilst the men present the Soldiers’ Chorus from Il Trovatore. There are, of course, many other operatic delights to entertain you as you sip a glass or two of bubbly and enjoy a table of fine nibbles.

Husband and wife team Paul and Ruth Provost are your accompanist and solo soprano respectively – Ruth will perform four solo arias.

A choice selection of choruses and arias from the best of grand opera including:

Verdi
Rossini
Mascagni
Borodin
Wagner
Bizet

with Ruth Provost (soprano)

director – Katherine Dienes-Williams
piano – Paul Provost

Tickets are available online, by phone or in person from the Cathedral Box Office (01962 857275) £20, including a glass of Prosecco and nibbles (concessions £17:50; children 17 and under £7.50)

Infant Holy – Southern Voices Christmas concert

Once again Southern Voices will usher in Christmas in the atmospheric surroundings of St Cross Church, where we hope that the audience will enjoy — and join in with — a selection of carols ranging from the traditional to the modern, from the familiar to the new.

Sir David Willcocks, whose compositions and arrangements have been the cornerstone of many Christmas services and carol concerts over the last four decades, sadly died in September and our concert will celebrate his unique contribution to the music of Christmas. Several Willcocks carols will feature in our programme, along with well-known carols for the audience and contemporary carol arrangements from Northern European composers.

Saturday 19 December at 7:30 in St Cross Church, Winchester

Music will include:

• A selection of carols by Sir David Willcocks
• Edvard Grieg: Ave Maris Stella
• Trond Kverno: Corpus Christi Carol
• Otto Olsson (arr): God’s Son is born
• Jan Węcowski: Ave Maria, Mater mea
• Carols for choir and audience

Director – Katherine Dienes-Williams

Organ – Paul Provost

Each year we use this concert to raise money for deserving charities and this year the retiring collection will be in aid of TASC Madagascar. This registered charity helps some of the most disadvantaged people in the Vohipeno area of South East Madagascar, supporting individuals, families and communities, focussing on sustainable projects in education, health and the environment. TASC provides significant aid to the inspirational Children’s Home at Tanjomoha which cares for orphaned, malnourished, sick and disabled children. http://www.tascmadagascar.org

Tickets £16 (concessions £14; children 17 and under £5) are available online and from:

Winchester Cathedral Box Office, The Visitors’ Centre, The Close, Winchester, SO23 9LS (tel: 01962 857275).

Sancta Maria – Southern Voices March concert

The next Southern Voices concert will cover five centuries of choral music celebrating the Virgin Mary. It will take place on Saturday 14 March at 7.30 in St Cross Church in Winchester.

The programme includes the usual Southern Voices fare with some fantastic early music from Tallis, Byrd and Palestrina through to more modern pieces from Einojuhani Rautavaara, Richard Allain and Jan Sandström. The pieces sound amazing in rehearsal!

Musical director Katherine Dienes-Williams outlines the programme

Mary, Mother of Jesus. Throughout the ages, choral works have been written concerning aspects of Mary’s life and her role as mother of Jesus Christ. Through music and reflection, our concert will explore seven different aspects of this: The Nativity of Mary, The Annunciation, the Nativity of Jesus, Mary’s role in Jesus’ ministry, Mary at the Cross, the Assumption and the adoration of Mary. Canon Dr. Andrew Bishop, Chaplain to the University of Surrey, will lead reflections interspersed with choral items from Thomas Tallis’ florid setting of ‘Salve intemerata’ to Giovanni di Palestrina’s ‘Stabat Mater’, from James Macmillan’s ‘Seinte Mari, moder milde’, to Einojuhani Rautavaara’s ‘Canticum Mariae virginis’. This will be a heady mix of music from the Renaissance to the present day, and will show something of the veneration accorded to the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout the ages.

The programme will include:

Tallis – Salve intermerata
Victoria – Ne timeas Maria
Byrd – Ecce Virgo concipiet
Morales – Ecce Virgo concipiet
Sandstrom – Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
MacMillan – Seinte Maria moder milde
Richard Allain – Cana’s Guest
Palestrina – Stabat mater
Palestrina – Assumpta es Maria
Morales – Exsaltata est sancta
Rautavaara – Canticum Marie Virginis

Tickets prices

Full price £16 (concessions £14; children 17 and under £5)
Available from the Cathedral Box Office or from me.

Merrily on High – Southern Voices Christmas concert

Our annual Christmas concert will be an excellent introduction to the week leading up to Christmas Day, with a varied selection of Advent and Christmas music, including traditional carols for choir and audience and fresh arrangements of familiar favourites.

Saturday 20 December at 7:30
St Cross Church, Winchester

Of particular interest are three carol settings by contemporary Nordic composers (Ešenvalds, Mantyjarvi and Sandström), as well as arrangements by current British composers such as Will Todd, Bob Chilcott, David Hill, Roy Massey. And of course it just wouldn’t be Christmas without two carols from John Rutter…

This year’s concert will be in aid of the local charity that runs the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance. The Air Ambulance crew are based at Thruxton near Andover and they work with the county’s emergency services to provide a prompt response to road traffic collisions, sporting accidents, collapses, and many other incidents throughout Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. For further details please visit their website hiow-airambulance.org.uk

We hope you will be able to join us for this celebration of the Christmas story, in the atmospheric setting of the Normal Chapel of St Cross.

The programme will include:

O Heiland reiss – Johannes Brahms
Pilgrim Jesus – Bob Chilcott
O Emmanuel – Ēriks Ešenvalds
Ave maria d’Aosta – Jaakko Mantyjarvi
Candlelight Carol – John Rutter
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen – arr. Jan Sandström
Maria durch den Dornwald ging – arr. Gottfried Wolters

plus
traditional carols for choir and audience

director – Katherine Dienes-Williams
organ – Paul Provost

Tickets prices: £16
(concessions £14; children 17 and under £5)
Available from the Cathedral Box Office or me…

‘Remembrance’ – concert by Southern Voices

Southern Voices next concert is entitled ‘Remembrance’ and will take place in St Cross on 15 November.

The concert will be a mixture of music and readings on the theme of Remembrance; the reader will be fellow tenor James McConnachie.

Music will include Alan Gray – “The Dead” and “The Soldier” (sonnets by Rupert Brookes), Hubert Parry – Six Songs of Farewell, James MacMillan – Miserere Mei and works by John Ireland, Mark Blatchly and William Harris. The music is the usual Southern Voices fare of the well-known to the less-known, always stretching the audience slightly; the MacMillan in particular is a pure delight.

Tickets £16 and £14 (concessions), children 17 and under £5. Tickets available at the Cathedral Box Office (or from me!). The concert starts at 7.30pm. People to help on the door welcome too…

Remembrance

A Boy was Born – Southern Voices

The next Southern Voices concert takes place in St Cross on 21 December at 7.30pm.

Our programme is centred round Benjamin Britten’s choral variations on A Boy was Born, and will also include his Ceremony of Carols. The remainder of the programme will include carols, new and old, for choir and audience.

Tickets prices: £17.50. Concessions: £14.50. Children 17 and under: £5. Available from the Cathedral Box Office or from me.

Benjamin Britten – Ceremony of Carols

Benjamin Britten – A Boy was Born

plus traditional carols for choir and orchestra

director – Katherine Dienes-Williams

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Chichester and Dorchester meet at St Cross

Leonard Bernstein is best remembered for a wealth of vivacious Broadway numbers, but Southern Voices are drawing on the American composer’s equally toe-tapping sacred repertoire for their forthcoming concert at St Cross Church, Winchester on Saturday 16 March.

The Chichester Psalms, commissioned for the 1965 Southern Cathedrals Festival, is a three movement work for chorus and boy treble soloist.  Sung in Hebrew, it will be performed from Bernstein’s reduced version for organ, harp and percussion.

The 100^th anniversary of the birth of  Bernstein’s  British contemporary, Benjamin Britten,   will be marked by a performance of his Choral Dances from the opera Gloriana.  Ladies’ voices will sing Gustav Holst’s choral hymns from the the Rig Veda (Hindu scriptures), composed  around the time of Britten’s birth, and Czech composer Janacek will feature with his scoring of the Lord’s Prayer for voices, organ and harp.

Meanwhile, the 21^st century will be represented by London-born Tarik O’Regan’s Dorchester Canticles, written in 2004. Now in his thirties, O’Regan is a highly acclaimed composer who divides his time between New York and Cambridge.

Tickets for the St Cross concert, which begins at 7.30pm, cost £17.50 (£14.50 concessions; children 17 and under £5) from me or Winchester Cathedral Box Office on 01962 857275.

 

That Yonge Child – Christmas concert at St Cross

Southern Voices at St Cross

The 2012 Southern Voices Christmas concert this year takes place on 22 December in St Cross. Entitled ‘That Yonge Child’ this is Katherine’s first Christmas concert with Southern Voices.

The music promises to be the usual eclectic mix of Christmas Music – “ancient and modern including traditional favourites and audience carols”. Highlights this year include Byrd’s Rorate caeli, O magnum mysterium by Xavier Busto, In dulci Jubilo by Samuel Scheidt and James Macmillan’s Magnificat. There is also music by (among others) Britten, Holst, Wilberg and Stuart Nicholson.

We will also sing ‘That yonge child’, after which the concert is names, by local composer (and husband to Beccy) Martin Read who tragically died earlier this year.

Then, of course, there is the unaccompanied candlelit procession in the dark at the start of the concert. Always a challenge to see if one can make it round St Cross without (a) falling over (b) stepping too hard on the feet of various audience members (c) keep in time and (d) not settng fire to the music.

Whatever you come to see or hear, tickets are £17.50, £14.50 (concessions) and £5 for children 17 and under. Tickets are available from the Winchester Cathedral Box office, or me if you like.