Whats ON - Dates for your diary!
The Slade School (whose artists recently competed in the Stations Competition here) have an opening night for the BA finals show on Friday 16th May. I am going and would be happy to be accompanied by a group from church. Please let me know if you may be interested. It is 6pm-9pm and I would suggest we leave here at about 7.30. Fr Martin
St Andrew’s Music Festival: Provisional Programme Details
A weekend of wonderful music-making and fun!
June, 20-22nd, 2008.
Friday 20th
7.30pm Opening cabaret and dinner evening with a wide range of entertainment including Good in Parts (a clerical barbershop quartet!), Songs from the Shows, Sketches, Cabaret acts, the Lambeth Walk and buffet dinner. Programme and dinner £10.00.
Saturday 21st
Church open all day
10-12noon - Children’s music workshops and performance for all school-age children. Followed by sandwiches and cake. Free, no need to book just turn up, no previous experience needed.
4.15pm - Afternoon, tea-time organ recital plus cream teas. Free recital, tea £5.00
8.00pm - Evening concert by Commotio - Oxford’s leading vocal ensemble - performing a selection of popular choral works. Programme £10.00, concessions £5.00.
Sunday 22nd
Church open all day
10.00am - Choral Eucharist with Festival Choir
12.00noon - Lunch available for visiting artists and guests
5.30pm - Reception with the Bishop of London (by invitation)
6.30pm - Festival Choral Evensong, Preacher: The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dr Richard Chartres, The Bishop of London with first performances of three newly commissioned works:
Peter Aston Magnificat and Nunc Dimmitis in Bb
‘The St Andrew’s Service’
Humphrey Clucas Responses
Jonathan Coffer Gesthemane for Soloists, Choir and Organ
(words by Rowan Williams)
7.30pm Wine and Sausages!
Supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust and the Performing Rights Society.
Biographies
Humphrey Clucas read English at King's College, Cambridge, where he was a Choral Scholar. Having taught English in schools for twenty-seven years, while maintaining a separate singing career, he finally gave up teaching on his
appointment to the choir of Westminster Abbey, from which he retired in 1999.
As a composer, he is self-taught. He has written a great deal of choral music,
much of it liturgical, and a growing body of organ music, with occasional
forays into other fields. His best-known work is still probably his earlier set
of Preces and Responses, written as an undergraduate in 1962.
Jonathan Coffer (b. 1989) is a first year undergraduate reading music at
Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. He studied composition with
Richard Causton at Wells Cathedral School. Competition successes include
winning the Senior Category in the BBC Guardian Young Composers'
Competition 2007, and the Young Composer's Prize in the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission Competition 2006. Resulting from these competitions,
Jonathan's music has been played in the Cadogan Hall, Wells Cathedral,
and has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 by Endymion and Peter
Wiegold. Recent works include a quintet commissioned for BBC Symphony
Orchestra Players, to be broadcast later in 2008. He is also interested
in Jazz, playing piano in several ensembles.
Peter Aston is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of East Anglia. His compositions include chamber music, choral and orchestral works and a children’s opera, but he is best known as a composer of church music, much of which is performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world. He is active internationally as a conductor and lecturer, and has directed many courses and workshops for composers in the UK and overseas.
Trevor Dawson can claim an unbroken association with St. Andrew’s, having been baptised here as a baby. He started to learn the organ while a pupil at Westminster City School in London and became organist at St. Andrew’s at the age of 14. Trevor is a graduate of the University of London and an Associate of the Royal College of Organists. He is a senior teacher and director of music at St. Dunstan’s Primary School, Cheam in Surrey. In addition, Trevor is also musical director of the Sutton Primary Schools’ Music Festival, a concert involving 500 children which is held annually at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon.
Coffee Morning every Tuesday from 10am till noon.
