There will be six concerts taking place in the series later this term. The venues, dates, and start times are listed below. Parents of the pupils involved are warmly invited to attend:
Upton Heath Primary School – Monday 11th March @ 0910
St. Oswald’s, Mollington – Thursday 14th March @ 0910
All Saints Church, Hoole – Saturday 16th March @ 1100
St. Werburgh’s Primary – Monday 18th March @ 0910
Saighton Primary School – Thursday 21st March @ 0910
Eccleston Primary School – Thursday 21st March @ 1020
The concert at All Saints Church will again be supporting a student bursary at Kampala Music School. Tickets £3/adult, £1/child. The concert programmes will features themed solos, duets and ensembles this term and will also include some of the outcome of the Ground Bass composition project which has been taking place this term.
2012 is nearly over and it’s a chance to look back over the year and take stock of what has been achieved. I don’t think I’ve ever organised so many piano concerts in one year before.
Over the past 12 months, there have been 16 concerts for my students to perform in around Chester. 36 of my students have taken exams including 19 prep tests and 2 theory exams.
Whilst the major project for the spring term featured a composition in a set format to run alongside a video I produced, the other terms featured collaborative video projects in which many of my students took part.
The review video clip below features excerpts from some of the concerts which have taken place over the year.
Some students have performed in as many as five concerts over the course of the year and their teachers in school have commented on how nice it is to see the progress they have made from concert to concert.
The concerts at All Saint’s enabled another £300 bursary to be sent to Kampala Music School in June. The bursary is now providing piano lessons for Justus, a 22 year old university student.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
WILL
The theme for the piano concerts this term is “Going Places”. Concerts have been organised for the following dates:
12th Nov – Upton Heath 910am
13th Nov – Saighton 11am
16th Nov – St. Werburgh’s 910am
17th Nov – All Saint’s Church, Hoole 11am
19th Nov – St. Oswalds 910am
The concerts will feature mostly themed solos and duets and may also showcase some ensemble and composition work carried out during the term. They will conclude with the now customary sing-along video item which this term will involve children from every school taking part, thereby unifying the series.
The concert at All Saint’s Church is open to anyone to attend and tickets are £3/£1, continuing to support the Kampala Bursary.
NESingers – Musical Director’s Vision Statement, September 2012
This season we are heading in a new direction following on from the successful Singing Day in May. The new branding “NESingers” opens the door to anyone who wants to join us, whether to sing with our broader, more accessible musical repertoire or to listen at any of the events where we will be performing.
In the Christmas programme, we will maintain our seasonal tradition with carol concerts featuring favourite carols mixed with new compositions with personal and local connections. This year, we will be including a setting of Silent Night by Jamie. W. Hall who sang with us as a soloist in 2004 and is now a member of the BBC Singers. Jamie has recently had a carol published by Novello in their latest anthology of Christmas music.
Repertoire for our Spring concert will feature folksong settings by Rutter as well as an arrangement of “The Ashgrove” completed a few years ago by myself. This has already been performed as far afield as Perth, Western Australia. These items will by combined with lighter popular music and some audience participation.
Looking further ahead, we will continue our popular theme into the next season. Hopefully we can revisit some repertoire the singers have done in the past with renewed vision as well as learning new works to further expand upon our choral skills and musical enjoyment.
After a very early start and what seemed like forever, we finally arrived on the outskirts of Reims.
The first beer of the evening tasted ten times better than it would have done had it not followed twelve hours or so sat on a coach! The meal we were provided with was also both very substantial and satisfying, (salty aubergine stew notwithstanding) After a night in the shoebox, the choir enjoyed a morning of sight-seeing and photography in Reims before travelling down to Troyes for the first concert of the tour.
The concert took place in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. Whilst the audience was not vast, the building was amazing and the acoustic huge, not dissimilar to an incredibly spacious bathroom. Zadok the Priest had to be taken more sedately than usual to allow time for the sound to cross the transepts.
Following the sat nav on the way home after the concert, we got to bed later than expected!
Another day spent on the coach with temperatures reaching 38 degrees took the choir to the cosmopolitan capital of the Midi-Pyrénées region in the south of France, Toulouse. The journey offered time out to enjoy a game or two over a glass of wine.
A trip to Albi the next day featured the second concert of the tour in the Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile which was nominated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2010. Another stunning and highly decorated interior with equally wonderful acoustics to match. The extreme heat however did make singing in a cassock slightly uncomfortable, though we could take Zadok slightly quicker.
Back in Toulouse that evening, the layclerks enjoyed a mojito while watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics in a cocktail bar near the hotel (in the presence of one of the torchbearers featured on screen!). On the way back however, we got a flavour of the local weather being caught out in a tremendous thunderstorm.
The final concert of the tour took place in the ancient Basilica of St Sernin in Toulouse, the largest surviving Romanesque church in the world. The basilica features a stunning Cavaillé-Coll grand organ built in 1888 considered to be one of the most important instruments of it’s type in France. It was extravagantly demonstrated during the concert by the Assistant Director of Music at Chester Cathedral, Benjamin Chewter.
Another late night in Toulouse offered the opportunity to experience a wonderful light show projected on to the Neoclassical Capitolium Building in the centre of the city which was a tremendous array of pyrotechnics and laser wizardry.
Next morning, it was back on the coach for another day returning to Northern France and the outskirts of Paris for a visit to EuroDisney or Paris itself for those so inclined. This return coach trip offered a chance to reflect on the music experienced on the tour. A day out in Paris provided an excellent opportunity to visit (and re-visit) some magnificent church buildings for a spot of photography and enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the city while sampling some regional beer and watching the world go by.
2012 is nearly over and it’s a chance to look back over the year and take stock of what has been achieved. I don’t think I’ve ever organised so many piano concerts in one year before.
The theme for the piano concerts this term is “Going Places”. Concerts have been organised for the following dates:
