Future plans

Unless indicated, all events are held at the church of St Anne and St Andrew, 125 Salusbury Rd, NW6 (see map here).

 

 



Spring concerts - April and June 2012

 

David Till’s call to sing contains quite a lot of information. It is organized as follows:

 

·               Outline of the concert

·               Our policy on taking part in these concerts, agreed by the Committee

·               Dates and times of rehearsals

·               Resources for you to use for practice

 

If you have any queries, please contact David Till.


Outline of the concert


The programme will include:

·               Bach -- Magnificat in D major; 

·               Rachmaninoff -- sections from the All Night Vigil, including the Magnificat;

 

·               Schubert -- Fifth Symphony (just for the orchestra…)


We will do the same programme at St Anne's on 29th April, and at St Augustine's on 17th June. The April concert will be David Till’s 70th birthday celebration and will take place at St Anne's because this is the choir's home, where we have always rehearsed and where almost all of our concerts have taken place.

 

Policy on taking part in these concerts

 

Space is rather limited at St Anne’s, as we have discovered recently, and this is the main reason we have scheduled a repeat performance at St Augustine's. The Bach Magnificat needs an orchestra of 20+ so it will be necessary to limit the choir numbers to 40 at St Anne's. If this means that some of our singers cannot take part on that occasion, there will be a second opportunity in June.

 

Attendance at rehearsals will be particularly important for this music and anyone who misses more than one or two rehearsals will have to be left out of the first performance. Any singers who feel they are not on top of the music by the last rehearsal before Easter should consider sitting out the  first performance too, and may indeed be asked to do so.

 

David will also have to try to ensure a reasonable balance amongst the parts, but note that there are two soprano parts throughout so in theory we need twice as many sops as any other part. On the sign up form you will be asked if you are an Alto who could sing Sop 2; this part never goes above F# and that only very occasionally but there are plenty of E's.

Needless to say, if you want to take part in the second performance you will need to attend most of the whole series of rehearsals, before and after Easter.

 

Dates

 

Rehearsals are as follows:

 

·        Sunday 12th, 19th, 26th February 2012

·        Sunday 4th, 11th, 18th March

·        Sunday 1st, 15th, 22nd April

 

CONCERT on Sunday 29th April (rehearsal beforehand), followed by more rehearsals:

·        Sunday 20th, 27th May, and Saturday 16th  June

 

CONCERT on Sunday 17th June, at St Augustine’s Kilburn (rehearsal beforehand).

 

Resources to help you practice

 

Music: please click on the links to see the scores, as follows:

 

·               Rachmaninoff: Magnificat and  Gladsome Light. Please print out your own copy: this is the edition we will use. NEW (2nd February): Translations of the text.

 

·               Bach Magnificat in D: Magnificat, Omnes Generationes, Fecit poteniam and Sicut locotus. Margot Lunnon (our new librarian) has located hire copies of the Barenreiter edition, so we will use these in rehearsals, but please use this edition to familiarise yourself with the music before rehearsals begin.

 

Assorted videos and MIDI files are also available, on David’s website

 

 

If you want to take part in these concerts please start to work on the music straight away. In the Bach the main difficulty is the notes, which require light, accurate and nimble singing. In the Rachmaninoff the words are the main difficulty; we are not going to make a big deal of authentic pronunciation but you have to be able to get your tongues around some strange combinations of consonants, so do practise saying the words. David has tried to make the transliteration as simple as possible, probably leaving out some of the nuances in the process. It is old Church Slavonic, so its a bit like King James English -- who knows how it might have been pronounced long ago?

David concludes: I think you will find this music wonderfully rewarding to sing, so let's make an even more special effort this time.

Signing up for the concerts

Sorry, but signup is now closed ….

Warm-up and technical exercises from Mary Phillips. In each case go “right click” on the link and then “save target as” to download to your own PC. Then open using one of your usual media players (they are in MP3 format). These are very large files so download may take a little while. Don’t forget to delete them from your PC when you have finished with them.

¨      Warm up exercises  (6 MB)

¨      Technical exercises: part 1  (6 MB)

¨      Technical exercises: Part 2 (5 MB)

¨      Warmup – recorded at 28 October 2007 rehearsal

¨      Online metronome

If you have any queries about future concerts, please text or call Peter Burtt-Jones on 07931 747133, or on 020 7624 7461, or email him at director@queensparksingers.org.uk.

Last updated:   February 3, 2012.