What we sing
We enjoy singing about love in the 1960s, death in Latin, God in Russian and sex in sixteenth-century madrigals in equal measure. In 2017 we started in April with West Side Story and Fauré's Requiem, and progressed to an exhilarating Verdi's Requiem in the summer concert.
For the summer concert of 2016, we had to polish up our German pronunciation as we performed music on a German theme. We found the German Requiem and Geistliches Lied by Brahms very uplifting and emotional, music from Mack the Knife quite menacing and Cabaret good for belting out.
For our summer concert in 2018 we sang Beethoven's 9th at Clifton Cathedral with the Long Ashton Orchestra.
No concert of ours is now complete without a Bruckner piece and in July it was the 'Kyrie' from Bruckner's Messe ohne Gloria und Credo. Our director completely won us over to a love of Bruckner, since taking us beyond the familiar Locus Iste to the heights of his Mass no. 3, which we sang in the summer concert of 2015.
We are lucky to have an in-house arranger, choir member Steve Hull, who has created his own versions of the Beach Boys and Proclaimers songs for us. While we focus mainly upon the classical, a substantial part of our repertoire concerns itself with the popular range of songs, such as a set of songs from Les Miserables and Mamma Mia, Can You Feel the Love Tonight (for which we won a cup at the Upton Choir Festival in 2016), California Dreaming, Goodnight Sweetheart...
We love singing favourite carols and seasonal music at Christmas, too. At Christmas 2016 we performed Britten's Ceremony of Carols.
Our programme, as are our rehearsals, is always varied. In one evening we could be singing part of a mass in Latin, crying for Argentina, going down in the river to pray or singing the charms of sweet Amaryllis.
But whatever it is, it’s always good fun. You can listen to us here.
