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March 2023 – March 2024 Mar 2023 – Mar 2024
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Mar
25
Sat
Saint-Saëns: Requiem and Britten: choral works @ St Michael's Church
Tickets
Mar 25 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

A detail frpm a painting of roses in a vase, some of their petals falling, and the text "Britten: Four choral works and Saint-Saëns: Requiem"

Chamber choir Voxcetera returns to St. Michael’s, Highgate, for a thrilling concert featuring Camille Saint-Saëns’ Requiem and four pieces by one of the best-loved and most distinctive composers of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten.

Saint-Saëns’ compelling and accessibly beautiful 1878 Requiem moves from quiet simplicity to unearthly fortissimi to shake you to the core. Originally scored for a vast orchestra, this version arranged for harp, strings and organ maintains Saint-Saëns’ heightened expression and heartfelt sincerity, but with the intimacy of chamber music. The performance features soprano Angela Henckel who has performed with notable ensembles all over the world, and in UK venues including the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, St. Martin’s-in-the Fields and Symphony Hall, Birmingham, as well as on Radio 3.

Britten wrote in 1945, “One of my chief aims is to try to restore to the musical setting of the English Language a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been curiously rare since the death of Purcell”. That vitality is abundant in his extraordinary cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, by turns as mad and as beautiful as the religious poems by Christopher Smart from which Britten took the text. Other short works on the menu are the joyful Jubilate Deo, the dramatic Missa Brevis in D, and Festival Te Deum which sets ethereal Gregorian chant against a progression of shifting organ chords.

A bar will be open before the concert and during the interval.

A portrait of a group of 15 people wearing a range of black and white smart-casual clothing standing on a lawn in front of an old church.
Voxcetera chamber choir
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Categories: Buzz Highgate Events Tags: choir classical concert Highgate Live Music music St Michaels Church
Dec
8
Fri
A Ceremony of Carols and other Festive Music @ St. Mary Brookfield Church
Tickets
Dec 8 @ 7:30 pm – 9:15 pm

Benjamin Britten’s much-loved work for voices and harp is the centrepiece of this year’s Christmas concert, which will also feature atmospheric sacred music from across the centuries and popular secular Christmas songs. You’ll also have the opportunity to raise the roof by joining in with a couple of well-known carols!

With Voxcetera chamber choir, Olivia Jageurs (harp), Paul Ayres (organ and piano), conducted by Jane Hopkins.

BAR: open from 7pm selling wine and mince pies.

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Categories: Buzz Highgate Events Tags: Carols choir Christmas Christmas Carols classical concert Live Music music north london performance
Mar
16
Sat
Concert – Vivaldi: Gloria and Gjeilo: Sunrise Mass @ St Michael's Church
Tickets
Mar 16 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Voxcetera returns to the beautiful St Michael’s Church with two dazzling works for choir and strings, written nearly 300 years apart.

Vivaldi: Gloria

In a crowded field, little beats this for exuberant Baroque joy. Yet it is full of variety, from the slow and tender “Et in terra pax” to the effervescent “Domine, Fili unigenite”, the choir accompanied throughout by sprightly strings, oboe and trumpet.

Ola Gjeilo: Sunrise Mass

“Most of my favourite composers are film composers working in America today” says the New York-based Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, and this thrilling mass pays tribute to the emotions, adrenaline and sense of wonder of film music. Scored for choir and strings and using traditional Latin texts, the 30-minute piece is strong on melody and rich in harmony, opening with gorgeous shimmering chords that emerge magically out of silence. It’s unmistakably modern, but it’s also in touch with early sacred music including Gregorian chant.

with:
Voxcetera chamber choir
Jane Hopkins, conductor
Ellie Sperling & Bethany Partridge, soloists
String orchestra, oboe, trumpet, organ

Voxcetera is a chamber choir celebrating sacred and secular music from medieval times to the present day under the direction of its founding conductor Jane Hopkins. The choir’s achievements include its popular Christmas concerts; performances with chamber ensembles of Fauré’s Requiem, Saint-Saëns’ Requiem and Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, at St Michael’s Highgate; tours to Germany and Ireland; performances at St Martin-in-the-Fields, St. John Smith Square, St. Stephen Walbrook and East Finchley Arts Festival; appearances at the Science Museum, British Library and the Southbank Centre; and a variety of recording work.

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Categories: Buzz Highgate Events Tags: choir choral music classical Classical music concert Highgate Live Music music north london
March 2023 – March 2024 Mar 2023 – Mar 2024