Our six week confident choral singing course led by Alison Houlbrooke, the Musical Director of Hereford Police Male Choir, ended on Wednesday with a concert for family and friends

Since the course started in mid September we have had a great introduction to some different styles of music and were astounded how quickly we were able to make a fantastic sound together. We combined work on music theory and reading music with vocal technique, along with confidence building for those who were absolute beginners to choral singing.  

On our last ‘concert night’ we sang a variety of songs, from the showtune Comedy Tonight and the African Jesu Ukukhanya to Watt’s Cradle Song, Besame Mucho and Rivers of Babylon. We then enjoyed a little party of wine and nibbles and very much hope that some of the new visitors who enjoyed the course will stay on as members of The Penyard Singers.

Listen to some:

You may remember that directed by Alison, Hereford Police Male Choir were very successful in BBC TV’s “Last Choir Standing“, 2008. Alison won praise from the judges for the precision of her conducting.

As a teenager Alison was Leader of Herefordshire Youth Orchestra and studied at Birmingham Conservatoire. Now a freelance music teacher, her work takes her into schools around the region. She also conducts Ludlow New Voices, an 80-strong youth choir, and sings with the international chamber choir “Sine Nomine”.

More details to follow shortly

We sang some madrigals, ballads and part songs to a small audience in the open air, over two sessions over the afternoon. In between, we enjoyed guided tours of the Coningsby site, including the 13th century chapel of the order of St John, the St John medieval museum & armoury, the replica hospital for Coningsby pensioners and the rose garden, monastery & preaching cross. We had picnics in the sunshine and enjoyed the pleasant and relaxed atmosphere.

John Frith’s ‘The Wanderer’
and
George Dyson’s ‘The Canterbury Pilgrims’

John Frith

‘The Wanderer’, a 40-minute work for chorus and orchestra, was composed by John Frith, who lives in Ledbury, as a commission for the Ledbury Poetry Festival in 2008 when its first and only complete performance to date was given by Ledbury Community Choir. It is a setting of eight poems by John Masefield, who was also a Ledbury resident. The poems are entitled: Cargoes, Tewkesbury Road, Beauty, On Eastnor Knoll, The Seekers, Trade Winds, Sea fever and The Wanderer’s Song.

George Dyson

George Dyson’s ‘The Canterbury Pilgrims’, settings for soloists, chorus and orchestra of portraits chosen from the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, was very popular with choral societies for a decade or so after its composition in 1930 but has since fallen out of the repertoire. The music is ‘uncomplicated, self-confident, vivacious and tuneful’ and the work deserves a revival. Moreover, it forms a perfect partner for ‘The Wanderer’, both works being about travelling and requiring similar orchestral and choral forces. The two works in their entirety are too long for the same concert and so, by permission of Oxford University Press, some of the portraits set for solo singer will be read by Bernadette Kearney, a former BBC West Midlands television presenter and newsreader. The movements we will be singing are Prologue, The Knight, The Clerk of Oxenford, The Haberdasher and his Fraternity: The Merchant, The Shipman, The Poor Parson of a Town and L’Envoie.

Inside the Shire Hall, Hereford

Soloists in the Dyson work will be James Rhoads, a lay clerk at Worcester Cathedral, and John Frith. A few of the solo portraits will be read by Bernadette Kearney, the former BBC West Midlands Newsreader and presenter, now a teacher and also a Ledbury resident. the Penyard Chamber Orchestra, aumented to 52 players, will join the choirs for this concert which will be conducted by The Penyard SIngers music director, Tony Washington.

Buy your tickets online here - Alternatively you may email boxoffice@penyardsingers.org.uk or call Mrs J. Sparkes on 01989 770334 for information on other methods of payment.

On Saturday 25th June 2011, we met in Llangrove Village Hall to record some of our favourite music from the last year and make a CD. This was primarily just for fun but we were able to listen to the recording straight away and identify some places where we could improve either our pitch or our pronunciation.

We had lots of fun and laughs, bringing food to share for lunch, and had a very enjoyable day. The final recording consisted of Sweet and Low (Joseph Barnby), As torrents in summer (Edward Elgar), Come live with me (William Sterndale Bennett), The Silver Swan (Orlando Gibbons), Stars of the summer night (John Hatton) and Come away, sweet love (Thomas Greaves).

Now Richard just has to edit it up for us!

Bishopswood  Hall was the venue for an enjoyable evening of  choral and orchestral music given by The Penyard Singers and The Penyard Chamber Orchestra on Saturday May 14th in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Joanne Sparkes, Soprano

The concert began with three Classical works. The first, Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa brevis St. Joannis de Deo, is a setting of the complete Latin mass which the composer compressed into a 15-minute work by setting several clauses of the text simultaneously in different voices. The Missa brevis is also known as the Little Organ Mass because of an extensive organ solo in the Benedictus. The choir and orchestra produced a full-bodied version of the mass, perhaps aided by the resonant acoustic of the hall, in some contrast to the original performance given by the seventeen musicians of the Hospitallers’ chapel in Einstadt in 1775. Joanne Sparkes was an accurate and musical soloist in the Benedictus, Vaughan Bennett was the organ soloist.

The mass was followed by two well-known pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Ave verum corpus and Laudate Dominum (from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore.)The “Laudate Dominum” from the Solemn Vespers of 1780 is a real test of legato singing for the soprano soloist, demanding excellent breath control to float the deceptively simple solo line. This test was met admirably by Joanne Sparkes  with perfect intonation and clear bell-like tone.

Carol West, Contralto

The Romantic period was represented by Gabriel Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine, three motets by Anton Bruckner – Locus iste, Tantum ergo in D and Ave Maria – and two orchestral extracts from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg – The death of Ase and Anitra’s Dance. Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine was sung in French and is often performed in concert as a companion to his popular Requiem. Anton Bruckner is often described as the “master-builder of cathedrals in sound” and anyone who has heard his symphonies or settings of the mass would agree with this. His unaccompanied motets are, of course, very different in scale but when listening to them, it is not hard to imagine how they would sound in a large, resonant cathedral. They are a joy to sing. Grieg’s Peer Gynt is a 95-minute setting of a play by Henrik Ibsen and is not well-known. But our two short extracts, played by a string orchestra (plus a triangle), were familiar to almost every listener.

Pam Frith, Oboe

After an interval enlivened not only by conversation but also by excellent refreshments, the choir and orchestra embarked on Vivaldi’s popular Gloria, its popularity undoubtedly due to its general verve, energy and rhythmic bounce as well as melodic inventiveness, all typical of the composer.
The choir coped well with the demanding speed of the first chorus and the broader pace of the “In terra pax”, with its call for great breath control held no fears for them. Here was singing of great commitment and accuracy, fully revealing the ingenious and infectious joy of the text. Tina Power and Joanne Sparkes combined in the duet “Laudamus te” with faultless ensemble and expression of the words, while in the “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” and “Qui sedes” Carol West sang with authority and real contralto tone. Pam Frith played a beautiful oboe accompaniment to Joanne in “Domine Deus, Rex Coelestis”. The work ended with all sections joining in a spirited rendition of the “Cum Sancto Spiritu” which rounded off a lively and accomplished performance.

Taken from programme notes by Tony Washington and review by David Backhouse

with wine and mince pies

Over the last week we have also been Carol Singing around Ross-on-Wye, including sessions at Labels, Morrisons and at Ross Marketplace

HITS Ancient & Modern – A miscellany of vocal works spanning 400 years, all of which were popular in their day and many of which are still familiar to us now.

HITS Ancient & Modern – A miscellany of vocal works spanning 400 years, all of which were popular in their day and many of which are still familiar to us now.