Christine will spend much of December touring France, Luxembourg and Germany with acclaimed French conductor Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée singing Bach’s Magnificat and Handel Dixit Dominus. You can catch her in London on 21st December with Siglo de Oro and organist David Titterington at St John’s Smith Square for Bach in Advent – tickets here.
Josephine is very involved with the Spitalfields Festival: she has composed 2 new pieces for the opening concert (House of Monteverdi), in which she’ll also be singing with The Erebus Ensemble, and also she will be singing as part of Schumann Street, accompanying herself with a tape player.
Paul will spend most of the month in Bergen: first for Messiah solos in Bergen Cathedral, followed by Otello at the nearby Grieghallen with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ed Gardner. Before coming home, his choir, Edvard Grieg Kor, will join with massed youth and children’s choirs for a concert in which they will sing the carol Paul wrote last year, Sir Christèmas.
Aidan will be stepping in to help conduct many of our December services before our new Maestro arrives in January.
Nick will be away performing Bach’s Christmas Oratorio solos in Edinburgh and for Wendover Choral Society. Then Messiah solos for Oxford Voices and the Instruments of Time and Truth with Edward Higginbottom in various parts of Spain. Add to that Christmas concerts for Battersea Choral Society and the Royal Overseas League and that sounds like quite enough Christmas for one person!
Martin writes that much as he enjoys doing Messiah solos at this time of year, it’s always nice to be asked to do something different. So God bless the Dudley Choral Society for putting on Finzi’s beautiful In Terra Pax as well as the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Xmas Carols.
After dropping the bombshell last week of my new job at the BBC Singers, I am going to be around much of December – excepting Christmas Day itself. That will be my last day at St Margaret’s Westminster Abbey, my ‘morning job’. I’m staying on at Hampstead until Easter Sunday. I hope to see some of you at Georgian Christmas on 6th December at 21 Church Row – lots of different things from last time, so do come again if you enjoyed it, or come for the first time….