Conductor’s Notes

Good evening friends, I hope you’re well and are enjoying the Easter break so far.

Below is feedback, important things for the summer, and a few extra things for you. Well worth the read.

Concert Feedback

Well, what can I say... it was absolutely outstanding! I cannot begin to express how pleased I was with the concert, and how proud of the choir I am! I really don’t know how to put this all into words, but here we go...

Firstly, that opening... wow! I think you all understood how overwhelmingly exciting it was by the look on my face! I felt the anticipation build in the room, then the air sucked out, before the most almighty(!) sound came from you lot, and it was just SO exciting! What an incredible way to open the concert!

Secondly, I want to say a huge congratulations for ‘switching on’ to each movement so quickly and professionally. Not once did I feel like you ‘weren’t going to sing the right bit’ as it were, which is such a compliment for such a bitty and technically demanding piece; you don’t get any respite, always having to focus and think about what’s coming up. You did this perfectly.

I was mesmerised by your Ruht Wohl, which was sung so musically and delicately, particularly after the long performance. This then contrasted with a joyous and rousing final chorale, during which you all watched like hawks, and this allowed us to make some exceptionally special music, especially joined by our soloists too!

We are (and by this I mean I am) of course honoured to have worked with some exquisite musicians in this concert. Our orchestra were flawless and supported us all so well, and our soloists were really something else. In the lead up to the concert I was telling people how lucky we were to have booked them all, and I hope you can all agree with me there... some names we’ll look back on in 10 years and go ‘Wow, weren’t we lucky to sing with them before they became so famous!’

Of course, it’s important to learn from the mistakes, but not dwell upon them, as it was live music after all, so will never be perfect. None of these were caused by you! (Well, maybe a slightly dodgy entry in one ‘Turba Chorus’ and a bit out of time in the first Chorus, but this was nothing really noticeable at all). The mistakes lie with me and 2 page turns – the first was for the final chorale in the first movement, which I didn’t get over quick enough to remind myself I had to give you a chord; instead you all took an almighty breath as I gestured you to, and were ready to come in! Well done! You followed me! The best thing a conductor can have is a choir that follows no matter what! The second page turn was me not giving time for the orchestra, which I didn’t know about, but is in my score for when we do it again in 20 years...

As with the whole term and general running of the choir, there are far too many people to thank for all of their hard work. This is especially true for Saturday’s concert, such as those who set out new staging, put out audience chairs in the few minutes before the concert started as we had sold out, those who provided food and drinks for the orchestra and soloists... the list is literally endless (see Annabel’s spreadsheet, haha!) – thank you! You unsung heroes who always ensure that concerts can happen – Thank you!

A quick quote from Alison, our lead violin: “I just wanted to say again how much I and the rest of the orchestra enjoyed yesterday’s St John Passion. It was such a lovely occasion. . . The band felt so welcomed by everyone, and we very much appreciated the spread of delicious food the choir laid on for us – please pass on our heartfelt thanks.”

I want to thank you all for stepping up to the plate with this concert. It was, dare I say, the hardest one we’ve done together, and as soon as we took our seats for the Saturday rehearsal, I knew everyone was going to give their absolute best. I hope you’re all still basking in the success of it.

What. An. Incredible. Concert.

Summer Term

No rest for the wicked, eh?!
We kick off the summer term again on Wednesday 23rd April, working towards our Summer concert ‘A Night at the Opera’ on Saturday 28th June.

Hopefully all the details you’ll need are in the PDF here, including all the dates, and below are some other learning resources.

Rehearsal Schedules

I truly understand how helpful people find these schedules, so I’ll do my utmost to produce them well in advance of the next sessions. Here’s our first 4 weeks.

Marked Scores

As always, here are the Marked Scores for this term. You’ll be pleased to know that you don’t have to mark in ANYTHING! I’ve done it all for you and we’ll be handing out these booklets at our first rehearsal. There’s a booklet for each half of the concert.

As always these are Password Protected, and it’s the same password as for the St John Passion. Please email either Annabel or myself if you can’t remember it!

Conducting Workshop

As I’ve mentioned before, and hopefully you’ll have seen on the website, I’m running a workshop about conducting, which was inspired by your feedback from last year’s theory workshops! No hard theory in this, just a fun afternoon about conducting!

We are opening this to other choirs too, so please do share far and wide! Tickets are available HERE.

Other Events

Only one event that I know of coming up, and that’s the CRAG concert being given by Alison Bury, who led our John Passion. Well worth going to and supporting her and the excellent organisation CRAG.

I’m really looking forward to our new term together. In the meantime, have a lovely and restful Easter break.

Have a lovely break, and again, well done!
– Ben

Below are the learning guides for St John Passion for the 2025 Spring term. Please use these resources to assist in your practice at home.

Note-Learning Guides

CyberBass HERE.
Choralia HERE.
John Fletcher Music HERE.

Pronunciation Guides

All choral movements Pronunciation Tracks HERE.
Chorale Pronunciation Tracks HERE.
David’s Pronunciation Guide HERE.

Recommended Recordings

The recommended recording on Spotify HERE. For those who don’t use Spotify, this is the recording by John Eliot Gardiner and The Monteverdi Choir (2011).
The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.

Marked Score

The full-sized Marked Score is a big document, viewable HERE.

Other Useful Resources

The interview with John Dornenberg (Viola da Gamba player) is HERE.

Below is the Chiasmus structure at the heart of the piece.

Good morning one and all, I hope you’re well and have had a lovely week so far! Please forgive the lack of Notes recently, it’s been a very busy time – 5 concerts and 3 opera performances in the last few weeks! I’ve missed writing to you all.

This is it... concert week! We’ve been working really hard on the Bach for a long time now, so let’s give a really good show on Saturday. Annabel’s already shared the logistical details, but they’re all below for you too. I’m really looking forward to our concert on Saturday.

This term so far

What excellent work we’ve been able to do, refining each movement in our rehearsals, especially as people have clearly put in the hard work at home. We’ve covered each movement a number of times, and as you’ll see below, most in the last few weeks. Please do have one more go through of things before the day, just to remind yourselves of each movement.

Rehearsal Schedule

Here’s our rehearsal schedule for our final couple of sessions, along with what we’ve been doing for the past few too. Please use this as a guide for what to look at before our final session on Friday, and what to catch up on if you’ve missed anything.

Seating Plan

We’ll be using Deddington’s staging on the day, but unfortunately we won’t be able to have it out on Friday. I’ve put together a rough seating plan for the concert, though this is of course subject to change. Please think carefully about eyelines!

Learning Resources

As always, there are a number of fantastic learning resources pinned to the top of this page. PLEASE USE THEM! I’ve included the image from a while ago about the ‘Chiasmus’ – the symmetrical structure of the middle of the piece, which pairs movements with the same musical themes; hopefully this will assist in the final days of practice.

Make sure you’re also singing along to recordings of the works, as it’s very different when all put together than just using a single line such as CyberBass.

Poster and Tickets

There are still plenty of tickets left on the website, so please promote sales to family, friends, and the wider community! It would be brilliant to have a good audience for this as we’ve all worked so hard: https://www.cncs.org.uk/product/stjohnpassion/

Please also share the poster below!

Jane Lewis – John Dornenberg Interview

Jane Lewis, one of our tenors, interviewed Jon Dornenberg, our Viola da Gamba player for the concert; it’s absolutely brilliant and well worth a watch. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1ZTNxY6Rq0

Logistical Details

As in Annabel’s email, here are the details for this week:

Wednesday 9th April – Rehearsal as normal, in Town Hall, 7.30pm – 9.30pm

Friday 11th April – Rehearsal in Deddington 7.30pm – 9.30pm
St Peter’s & St Paul’s Church, OX15 0SA
We are using staging for this concert so Ben will spend some time at the start of the rehearsal getting sight lines sorted out.
There is on street parking all around Deddington but if you can it would be advisable to consider lift-sharing

Saturday 12th April
Choir to arrive for 1.45pm
Choir warm up 2pm
Rehearsal starts 2.15pm
Tea break mid-afternoon
Rehearsal for choir ends 4.30pm latest
Rehearsal for band and soloists will continue
Choir back 7.10pm, in seats for 7.20pm.

You will be able to use the church between the rehearsal and the concert, if you want to bring a picnic tea and also change in the church. Otherwise there are a number of pubs in Deddington, all very close to the church. If you want to eat at one of the pubs it is probably best to book in advance.

Choir dress for this concert: Sopranos and altos: long black (long sleeves; dresses/skirts or trousers, no jeans please). Tenors and basses: black suit/dinner suit, white shirt and black bow tie. Female tenors and male altos can choose which option they prefer.

We will not be using folders for this concert.

Scores: If you are singing next term, please take your score home and rub out all your markings, then return the score at the first rehearsal. If you are not singing next term (or you’re not yet sure), please leave your score behind after the concert, in the boxes which will be provided in the church.

That’s it for now, see you soon!
– Ben

Hello everyone! I hope you’re well and are having a good week so far? This term has been going excellently so far, I’m really pleased with how everyone’s tackling the music. I’m particularly proud to know of the little groups people are forming to catch up, note bash, and continue learning the piece. Thank you for all your hard work, this will be an incredible concert!

Meanwhile, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to provide things to assist you in your learning, so I hope everything below is helpful. Please do read these Notes carefully as there are lots of important things.

This term so far

We’ve done some really good work on the piece so far, both in tutti and sectional rehearsals. A huge thank you to Bernard who took the rehearsal on Wednesday 12th when I was away. We’ve been focussing a lot on the first movement, and spending some time in each rehearsal going through the Chorales. If you’ve missed any rehearsals, or would like to remind yourself of what we’ve been doing, please go back through Conductor’s Notes to see the monthly rehearsal schedules.

Rehearsal Schedule

February’s rehearsal schedule was sent out by Annabel at the start of the month, but it’s also below as a reminder.

I understand how helpful it is having the rehearsal schedules for the month – from my point of view though, our success in rehearsals can change things unexpectedly so it makes planning more than a months worth of rehearsals a little tricky. I will do my utmost to have a March rehearsal schedule out as soon as possible following the February rehearsals.

We have a friend of mine, Peter Gortner (director of music at Christuskirche, Karlsruhe) coming to give us some language coaching on Wednesday 5th March – we’ll certainly do movement 1, and then likely work on some Chorales.
The following week (Wednesday 12th March), as you’ll hopefully have seen, we’ll do a run of the piece.

CHECK OUT FEBRUARY’S REHEARSAL SCHEDULE BELOW!

New learning resources

In addition to the resources we’ve already provided, we’ve obtained some more learning resources to help with your practice of the piece. PLEASE USE THEM!

If anyone is struggling to use the resources, please don’t hesitate to ask for help – Nick, our treasurer, usually brings along his laptop to rehearsals in case anyone needs help accessing anything.

Pronunciation Tracks – This is a wonderful resource which slowly speaks through all of the movements we’re singing. I’d go as far as saying that this is the most useful resource we have. Listen to it and practice the pronunciation HERE.

CyberBass – Some people prefer to use this over John Fletcher Music and Choralia, so do check it out HERE.

PDF Guides – David in the basses has put together a wonderful pronunciation guide. He did this for the Brahms Requiem two years ago for some people and they found it really helpful, so please look at his guide below.

Other resources, along with the link to the Marked Score can be found pinned to the top of the ‘Conductor’s Notes’ page, and in previous Conductor’s Notes.

Chipping Norton Music Festival

As you know, we’re performing at the Chipping Norton Music Festival on Saturday 8th March.
Our confirmed time is 3:30pm, and we’re the last in the set! Please get there around 3:15pm so we can get seated.

We’ll be performing Movement 1 Herr, unser Herrscher from the St John Passion, and we’ll also be doing In a Dream Late as I Lay by Jan Wilke, which we did in the Christmas concert.
IF YOU’RE NOT SINGING IN THE FESTIVAL BUT DID SING AT CHRISTMAS, PLEASE CAN WE BORROW YOUR COPY OF IN A DREAM.

Owing to making full use of Peter Gortner visiting on the 5th March, we will be having two short rehearsals 15-minute after the main rehearsals on Wednesday 28th February and Wednesday 5th March to practice the Wilke and run the Bach. If you’re singing in the Festival, please stay for these.

If you’ve not sung in the Festival before, it’s a great opportunity to perform, and show off the choir to other ensembles. Please do join us for this so we can put on a good show.

The Cotswold Youth Choir will also be performing, at the ‘Youth Choirs’ slot in the morning. Please come along to support them at 10:30am too.

Check out all of the concerts in the Festival below, and head to the website for more information: https://www.cnmf.org.uk/

Other events

Its amazing to be part of a community where so much music is happening! We’ve got people involved in all of the below events, so please go and support these events.

That’s it for now, see you all on Wednesday 19th Feb!
– Ben

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’re all well and had a very restful and enjoyable Christmas and New Year. We had a lovely time here in Chippy for Ezra’s first Christmas!

2024, in particular the final few months, was certainly a whirlwind! I want to start off 2025 by saying a massive thank you to you all for your support, and most importantly, your understanding. The choir really succeeded in 2024, with 3 excellent concerts as well as multiple other events (more on that below), but we were impacted by various things, especially the untimely death of our good friend Eric and the birth of mine and Bec’s son Ezra.

Bec and I have been overwhelmed by everyone’s love and immense generosity, both through her pregnancy and since Ezra’s arrival. We’ve had so many cards, so many people coming up to us to share their congratulations, and so many offers of help, we really do feel very moved and VERY lucky! We were completely blown away by the incredibly generous cheque and that was given to us at the Christmas concert rehearsal; we decided to put some of that money towards a family photo shoot so we can cherish this period of Ezra’s life for years to come (please come and say hi on Wednesday if you’d like to see some of the photos!)

Once again, thank you to you all for unwavering support in a very difficult (for both good and bad reasons) past couple of months. I really look forward to spending 2025 with you all.

Last Term Feedback

Well, what a good term that was! We did so much in the space of 4 months, including putting on an excellent Christmas concert, 3 Christmas events, and before that starting work on the John Passion. One negative side to this, which I can completely understand, is that it felt like a really ‘bitty’ term, especially with the programme of music for the Christmas concert. I apologise for the broken nature of the term and the programme, I understand that it made learning the music a little harder than normal.

However, despite this, we still had a really wonderful Christmas concert! I thought the second half in particular was wonderful and, as I’ve heard from many members of the choir and audience, my highlights were the Jan Wilke pieces which sounded fab! There were some other truly exceptional bits of singing in the concert, notably O Little Town of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, and of course Jingle Bells which we’d all worked so hard on; despite it nearly falling apart in the first 4 bars as the adrenaline settled, it was a very assured and exciting performance, and a perfect way to end the concert! It would be remiss of me not to thank our accompanists, Reuben and Bernard, who played so exceptionally both as accompanists and soloists!

While it’s important to acknowledge and learn from the things that didn’t go so well, I want to remind you that things not going 100% is part of the joys of live music. With that said, I was really pleased with the Britten. Yes, there were a couple of moments which ‘almost fell apart’, but they didn’t detract from the movements that went well, the exciting atmosphere, and the excellent sound we made throughout the piece. So what if we rushed in This Little Babe, when Wolcum Yole was super exciting and engaging; and it doesn’t matter that we didn’t come in very confidently in As Dew in Aprille because That Younge Child was brilliant! It was a very good performance overall, and I’m very pleased and proud of it! Let’s learn from those ‘squeaky’ moments and make this term even better! Thank you for all the hard work you put in, especially in the last week or so – let’s get using those learning guides sooner this term!

Alongside our concert, we also did 3 carol events – the Chippy Christmas Lights Switch On, the Great Rollright Christmas Market, and at Watson Place Retirement Home. These all went incredibly well, and I’ve had some excellent feedback from listeners, plus invitations back for next year too. A huge thank you to all who sang for those, you represented the Choral Society brilliantly!

Wow, what a term! Before I wrap up, I want to say a final few thank yous – to our fantastic accompanist Ro, without whom we’d be lost; to Callum for taking the rehearsals while I was on paternity leave; to Annabel our Chair, and all of our wonderful Committee, who put so much time and hard work in behind the scenes to organise all that we do (we really couldn’t do it without them!!); and to those who ‘work backstage’ as it were, both at rehearsals and the concert – without fail you set up chairs, move furniture, sort refreshments, sell programmes and tickets, and countless other jobs that we often take for granted! Thank you, we’re all so grateful!

Plan for this term

Right, onto this term! It’s very exciting to be doing Bach’s John Passion this term. We already had 4 rehearsals in September on the piece, introducing us to every movement we sing, providing some background to the piece, and helping us understand the structure of the work. I look forward to building on this.

I’ll be providing monthly schedules for the project, so I don’t have to always worry about updating Conductor’s Notes each week (and letting you down when I miss it!). My one caveat is that it may change slightly each week depending on the previous rehearsal, but I hope it gives you all a decent ‘heads up’ about what to practice in advance of each rehearsal.

CHECK OUT JANUARY’S REHEARSAL SCHEDULE BELOW!

Dates

As well as the concert, there are a couple more dates for this term to put in your diaries.

Saturday 22nd February, 2pm-5pm – Workshop on Conducting
Following the theory workshops last year, there were a lot of requests for a conducting-based workshop to help understand what it is exactly that I do. This will be a great fun afternoon!
Please note this was originally on the 25th January, but has had to be moved to the 22nd February.

Saturday 8th March, times TBC, likely afternoon – Chipping Norton Music Festival
We’ll be singing at the Chipping Norton Music Festival. It’s our chance to show off to other choirs, promoting what we do and our Spring concert. This year we’ll perform the 1st movement of the Bach, as well as one of the Jan Wilke pieces from our Christmas concert. Let’s put on a good show and get the highest mark they give out!

Friday 11th April, 7:30pm-9:30pm – Friday rehearsal
Please note that we are having a Friday night rehearsal in the concert venue for this one. This is such an important rehearsal as it helps us get used to the space before the concert on the 12th April.

Marked Scores

The full-sized Marked Score is a big document, so I’ve provided a link to it HERE.

Alternatively, I’ve managed to compress it but it’s harder to read some of the markings. You can check that out below.

Please note that as the edition we’re using is still in copyright, the document is password protected. Annabel will email out the password, or you can ask on any Wednesday.

I expect all markings to be in by the end of the month please! It saves so much rehearsal time if everyone has them in, so I do expect you to take the time to put them in.

Learning Resources

There’ll be plenty of help in rehearsals on pronunciation, including some vocal coaching. We are exploring other learning resources too to give everyone the best help possible for the German.

In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.

– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

The recommended recording on Spotify HERE.

The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.

Cotswold Youth Choir

We had our first Christmas Concert on Friday 13th December, and it was so lovely to see so many from CNCS in the audience supporting the youngsters.

However, we still need more members, so please keep sharing our poster to anyone and everyone you know to encourage as many young singers to join as possible!

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading all the way through, and I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday 8th January!
– Ben

Hello all, I hope you’re well and have had a good start to December! It’s been a while since I last wrote on here, but as you know we’ve had a pretty major life event, so thank you for your patience. As I said to those on Wednesday 27th November, a huge thank you for your very kind gift and all of the lovely cards and messages we’ve received. I hope it won’t be too long until Ezra joins the choir!

I’ll post again in the week before our concert, but for now there are some important things below, a lot of which I’m reiterating from Annabel’s email. You may remember we did a run of the Britten last week, so there’s an update on that, as well as some helpful learning resources to support you in this final push to the concert. Thank you all for reading.

What we did – Wednesday 27th November

We had the AGM in the second half of the rehearsal last week so thank you to all who stayed for that, as well as those who stood to remain/become members of the Committee – we’ve got a great team of people who put in so much work behind the scenes.

Before this, we looked at O Little Town of Bethlehem, ensuring the ensemble is there, which it really was! We also looked at Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, reminding ourselves of the tricky rhythms and rich harmonies at Letter C. After this we did a run of the Britten A Ceremony of Carols. A lot of this was good... a lot of it still needs lots of work and familiarisation, especially at home.

PLEASE NOTE: I have made the difficult decision to CUT Movement 8 In Freezing Winter’s Night from the programme.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look at Shepherd’s Pipe Carol and the entirety of the Britten (especially if you’re a soprano or alto!)

Just to also say a massive thank you to those who sang at the Chipping Norton Christmas Lights Switch On on Thursday 28th, and those who came to support in the huge crowds; it seemed to go down a treat!

What we’ll do – Final two rehearsals of the term

Wednesday 4th December

We’ll work a lot on the Britten this week, splitting off into sectionals to maximise the rehearsal time. Here’s what we’ll do:
Sans Day Carol
Shepherd’s Pipe Carol
Procession/Recession (S/A)
There is No Rose (S/A)
That Younge Child (S/A)
Spring Carol (S/A)
There is no Rose – p15-16 (T/B)
Balulalow – p20-22 (T/B)
Deo Gracias – p51-59 (T/B)
A Maiden most gentle – p24 in 100 CFC (T/B)
We’ll then run There is No Rose, Balulalow, and Deo Gracias in tutti.
We’ll finish with work on Jingle Bells.

Wednesday 11th December

*Please note that this rehearsal is in St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton (our concert venue)*

This rehearsal will ultimately be a ‘top-and-tail’ of everything, so we can be as prepared for putting it with the harp and organ as possible. We’ll look at:
Jingle Bells
Shepherd’s Pipe Carol
A Maiden Most Gentle
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
The three pieces by Jan Wilke
Movements from Ceremony of Carols
And we’ll end by standing ‘in situ’ and go through the main carols – Hark the Herald, Lo He Comes, and Good King Wenceslas.

Learning Guides

As well as the Britten learning guides which I’ve shared this term, I’ve written out the Jingle Bells parts to help with the final push of learning. Please use them!

BRITTEN

JINGLE BELLS

100 CAROLS FOR CHOIRS

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Marked Scores

I’m certain all the markings are in your copies by now(!) However, importantly, in order to save time on Wednesday, please remind yourselves of the splits in Balulalow, which I have shared again below.

Concert Day – Saturday 14th December

Just to reiterate what Annabel wrote in her email to you all:

Dress rehearsal – please be in church ready to sing for 2pm (this means in your seats by 1:50pm please); teas and coffees will be provided for a short break during the afternoon. The Parish Rooms across from the church will be available between the rehearsal and the concert if you want to bring a picnic tea and need somewhere to change. The rehearsal will finish at 5pm latest.

Concert dress – all black; or dinner jackets, white shirts, and black bow ties. For new members to the choir and for whom this is your first concert, all black means ‘long black’- your choice of dresses, skirts or trousers. No jeans for anyone please. St Mary’s is prone to drafts, so please bear that in mind and consider dressing defensively! We’ll ensure the heating is on!

Concert start time – please be in your seats by 7.20pm for the 7.30pm start. There’ll be a warm up in the Parish Rooms at 7:10pm.

Returning scores – Boxes will be provided in the church for you to return your Carols for Choirs (if you borrowed a copy) and also the Britten scores. This must be done after the concert please, so that Susannah can pack them up and send them back to the lenders before Christmas. The booklets are yours to keep. If you are not singing in the concert, please arrange to get your scores back to Susannah Howe before the concert.

Volunteers – Thank you to those people who have come forward so far to offer help with the refreshments set up and serving; front of house/ticket and programme sales. We will brief you on the day, so nothing to worry about in advance

We provide mince pies to accompany the drinks, and need a few people to assist with assembling them on trays and handing round during the interval. So, we also need you to bring mince pies along as well on the day please, home made or bought. The Choir will provide gluten free/lactose free mince pies, so no need to take that into account. We donate any surplus to the local food bank.

Tickets – Please continue to sell tickets! Our Christmas concerts are a lovely mix of Choir items and the audience joining us and with the harp and organ solos from Reuben and Bernard West, it will be a super occasion. We’ve sold 55 on the website so far... keep going!

Carol Singing Events

We still have two more events after our concert, and I could do with some more singers for them:

Great Rollright Christmas Fair – Sunday 15th December
10:45am-11:45am – Great Rollright Village Hall.

We have about 15 people signed up so far but we could still benefit from one or two more sopranos and basses to join us. We will be singing at the start of the Fair, from 11am.

Watson Place, Chipping Norton – Wednesday 18th December
5.45 pm – 6.45pm – Watson Place McCarthy Stone retirement complex (end of Trinity Road, behind the M&S Food Hall)

This is now on Wednesday 18th December NOT Sunday 15th as previously communicated. It will be indoors, and we still need a few singers from each part. They are kindly offering some refreshments afterwards.

That’s all for now, see you all on Wednesday 4th (having done lots of practice!)
– Ben

Hello friends, I hope you’re all well and have had a good start to the week. A little bit in these notes, both for this week and future weeks, so thank you very much for reading through carefully.

I want to start with an apology for the lack of Conductor’s Notes – I know people find them really helpful, especially in knowing what’s coming up in rehearsals, as well as finding out what we’ve done. With the various bereavements we’ve had over the past couple of weeks, focus has had to be diverted elsewhere, which I’m sure you all understand. Focus will continue to be diverted when the baby arrives, but I’ll do my best to stay in touch as life (hopefully) settles again – I wonder how many comments I’ll get from people saying “Your life will never settle again!” haha! Either way, please do keep checking notes, and I’ll try to get at least something out in advance of rehearsals so you all know what we’ll be doing. Thank you for understanding!

What we’ve been doing

We’ve obviously spent a lot of good time so far on our new music for our Christmas concert on the 14th December. I think there are already some pieces which are coming together nicely, given it’s the first month of rehearsals. A brief overview of what we’ve done:

• In the first week we read through almost everything, and then completed this in week 2.
• We’ve done some good sectional rehearsals on various bits, including the SA bits in A Ceremony of Carols.
• We’ve spent a bit of time getting to grips with Ben Parry’s Dashing Through the Snow (Jingle Bells) which will be a cracking encore in the concert, as well as a few other tricky pieces.
• It’s been great to introduce you to the three works by German composer Jan Wilke, and start working on those.

To catch up: If you’ve missed any of the rehearsals so far, please familiarise yourselves with the music by listening to the recordings, putting the markings in, and singing through them as best as possible, especially Dashing Through the Snow which is tricky.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 30th October

A REMINDER THAT THERE IS A REHEARSAL THIS WEEK!

We’ll be continuing our great work so far with the below:

Good King Wenceslas; Jingle Bells (bars 87 – end); Sans Day Carol; In a Dream; Sectionals on Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (SA with Ro) & Lullay, Mine Liking (TB with Callum & Ben); Lullay Mine Liking (Tutti); In Freezing Winter Night; and we’ll end (ironically) with Wolcum Yole.

Next Few Weeks

When I’m on paternity leave, Callum Salisbury will very kindly be taking the rehearsals. To help him with his planning, I’ve put together the music I’d like covered in the next 4 weeks. You can see that below. Please be nice to Callum, we’re very grateful for his help!

Forthcoming Dates

Here are some important dates to mark in your diary – most are in the document outlining the dates for the year, on the ‘Members’ tab and on previous Conductor’s Notes tabs.

Saturday 2nd November – 2pm at St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton – Eric Clubley’s Memorial

Wednesday 27th November – normal rehearsal time – AGM (please attend!)

Thursday 28th November – 5:30-6:30pm at Chipping Norton Town Hall – Christmas Lights Switch On – I’ll be mentioning this on Wednesday as I’ll need to know numbers soon.

Friday 13th December – 7:30pm St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton – Cotswold Youth Choir concert, please support!

Saturday 14th December – Our Christmas concert at St Mary’s Chipping Norton.

Marked Scores

You can find all my markings for the music below. Over the next couple of weeks, as the weather gets even colder in the evenings, wrap up warm with a mug of hot chocolate/glass of wine and PLEASE PUT THE MARKINGS IN!

The editions are in copyright and we’re using the marked scores for reference only, the document is password protected – Annabel sent round the password a few weeks ago, but we’ll share it again on Wednesday.

Learning Guides

A Ceremony of Carols has two sources for learning guides:
If you subscribe to John Fletcher, you can find his learning guides HERE.
The free learning guide is available via Choralia – check it out HERE.

Susannah has very kindly shared a link to the learning guides for pieces in 100 Carols for Choirs – please make use of it HERE.

Most of the music is on YouTube, in one version of another. However, if you use Spotify, my playlist for the term is HERE.

Future Events

Do go along and support the forthcoming CRAG concerts!

This Week’s listening

One of the pieces that’s being sung at Eric’s memorial on Saturday is Rani Arbo’s setting of Alfred Tennyson’s poem Crossing the Bar. A few composers have taken this beautiful text and set it to music, and arguably the most well-known is by Hubert Parry. It’s only a few minutes long, so well worth the listen. Check it out HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 30th October!
– Ben

Hello all! I hope you had a lovely weekend and a great start to the week! A brief one for you all this week, so thanks for reading!

What we did – Wednesday 25th September

This was our final week on the Bach until January, so we tied up all of the loose ends that we hadn’t covered, as well as refreshing the opening movement.

• We began with the start of the second part, Nos. 15 (p66), 16b (p69), 16d (p76) and 17 (p84), a mix of chorales and choruses. These movements depict Jesus being taken away to Pilate – you’ll remember that we ended the previous week with the end of the first part, which saw Peter reflecting his denial of Jesus, just after he was arrested.
• After this we looked at the first movement again, reminding ourselves of the text, the performance of the music, and the different motifs – the musical building blocks.

To catch up: If you’re singing the Bach next year, please do keep looking through the piece until we start rehearsals again – it’s a mighty work, and familiarity is key. We’ve seen all of it in some good details over September, so remember those things we’ve gone through: Chorales; Choruses; Turba (‘crowds’) Choruses; motifs; structures; Da Capo choruses; chiasmus (musical symmetry); text; meaning; performance. It’ll be cracking when we come back to it in January.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 2nd October

IT’S CHRISTMAS! Haha! We begin working on our Christmas programme, so we’ll sing through as much of the programme as possible. You should all have copies of the Britten and 100 Carols for Choirs, so bring them with you this week! We’ll also be handing out the remaining music in printed booklets, so please arrive early to get these in time.

If you want to get ahead of the game, have a look at the ‘Project Sheet’ below for this term, which has the programme and all the dates in.

Marked Scores

You can find all my markings for the music below. Over the next couple of weeks, as the weather gets colder in the evenings, wrap up warm with a mug of hot chocolate/glass of wine and PLEASE PUT THE MARKINGS IN!

As with the Bach, as the editions are in copyright and we’re using the marked scores for reference only, the document is password protected – Annabel sent round the password a few weeks ago, but we’ll share it again on Wednesday.

Learning Guides

There are a few learning guides for this term, but the important one is the Ceremony of Carols by Britten.

If you subscribe to John Fletcher, you can find his learning guides HERE.

The free learning guide is available via Choralia – check it out HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

Most of the music is on YouTube, in one version of another. However, if you use Spotify, my playlist for the term is HERE.

Future Events

As Fran kindly mentioned on Wednesday, there are some really exciting forthcoming CRAG concerts, so get them in the diary now!

This Week’s listening

I’m doing a very exciting concert in a couple of months with the OUP Choir, and I’m currently working hard on my chamber orchestration of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Requiem. It’s a truly stunning piece of music, and I encourage you all to listen to at least the first movement, as recorded by my alma mater, the University of Birmingham. Check it out HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 2nd October!
– Ben

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all well and are staying safe in this awful weather! A brief one for you all in advance of our final rehearsal this term of the Bach this coming Wednesday, thanks for reading.

What we did – Wednesday 18th September

Following on from last week’s big session on symmetrical structures (chiasmus) in Bach’s mature choral works, specifically the ‘Herzstueck‘ (you can read about this in last week’s post), we looked at the other chiasmus in the piece, which draws our attention to Es is Vollbracht (“It is finished”) – the climax of the John Passion. It’s a monumental moment, and the movements which build to, and surround, it are particularly important.

• We began with Nos. 26 (p157) and 27b (p159), our prepatory Chorale and Chorus, which further where we are in the story and build up to the climactic moment of Jesus’s death.
• Then we worked on the surrounding Chorales, Nos. 28 (p170) and 32 (p178) which form the symmetrical structure for the climax of the work.
• We finished by working through the end of the first part of the passion, Nos. 11 (p52), 12b (p54) and 14 (p64) – a combination of Chorales and ‘Turba Choruses’ where we interrupt the narrative.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look at Nos. 28 & 32 in particular and notice their similarities, forming the symmetry of the section.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 25th September

Our final rehearsal on the Bach until 2025, so we’ll tie up all the loose ends. We’ll begin with the start of the second part, Nos. 15 (p66), 16b (p69), 16d (p76) and 17 (p84), which depict Jesus being taken away (you’ll remember that we end the first part on Peter reflecting his denial of Jesus, just after he was arrested).
We’ll finish with a bit more work on the first movement of the piece, strengthening that incredible opening.

If you’ve missed any of the Bach rehearsals this term, you can see what we’ve done (and what you should catch up on) in the Rehearsal Schedule below.+

Marked Scores

The marked score will be provided over Christmas, in time for the Spring rehearsals, but below is a link to the unmarked score for anyone who would like to use it on their tablets. As the edition is still in copyright, and this page is open to the public, the document is password protected. Annabel will be sending round an email shortly with the password to view it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.

UNMARKED SCORE.

Learning Guides

We’ll be providing plenty of resources for the Spring term to help you with learning the piece, including lots of language pronunciation guides for the German (we’ll also be organising some language coaching for the choir too)!

In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.

– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

The recommended recording on Spotify HERE. For those who don’t use Spotify, this is the recording by John Eliot Gardiner and The Monteverdi Choir (2011).

The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.

Of course, the other recording that’s worth listening to is the BBC Prom, where it was performed this year. It’s available on BBC Sounds HERE.

Future Events

Just one thing for you this week – our friends Chris Windass and members of the Adderbury Ensemble have some concerts coming up that they’ve asked me to share, including one on THURSDAY 26th September at St Mary’s Church! Do go along and support these incredible musicians – the Britten in particular is amazing – and remember to say “Hi” when you see them!

This Week’s listening

As I mentioned, please do listen to Es ist Vollbracht from the St John Passion. You can check out the recording we were talking about by Barnaby Smith (Voces8 founder and countertenor) HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 25th September
– Ben

Good evening friends, I hope you’re all well and are looking forward to the weekend! Another fantastic rehearsal on Wednesday as we continue our romp through Bach’s St John Passion. I want to reiterate what I said on Wednesday here – please don’t be daunted by the piece as we rush through it! I know it’s a lot and it is tricky, but my aim with this month is to give you a good overview of the whole work, rather than breaking it down and learning it in great detail; we’ll be doing that in Spring 2025 as we work towards the concert.

What we did – Wednesday 11th September

This week was an interesting one – we looked at one of the larger structures in the piece – the Herzstück (the centerpiece of the entire work). Below is the whole chiasmus (symmetry) structure, which draws our focus to No. 22 – the chorale Durch dein Gefängnis, Gottes Sohn. Hopefully it makes a bit more sense now we’ve sung it and you can see the corresponding highlighted numbers.

• We began with No. 39 (p204), finishing up the ending from last week. We got a bit of a feel for the text, emphasised by that lamentation through the flowing melody.
• Following this we looked at the outer symmetry, learning and comparing Nos. 18b (p88) & 23f (p140), then Nos. 21b (p102) & 25b (p152).
• After this we saw the inner symmetry of Nos. 21d (p107) & 23d (p133), and Nos. 21f (p113) & 23b (p124).
• We finished by learning the focus of the entire work, No. 22 (p123).

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please study this chart above, and listen to each of the corresponding numbers, noting their similarities.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 18th September

This week we’ll be looking at the climax of the work, then the end of the first half. The numbers we’ll cover are: No. 26 (p157), No. 27b (p159), No. 28 (p170), No. 32 (p178), No. 11 (p52), No. 12b (54) and No. 14 (p64).

Below is the rehearsal plan for the September rehearsals of the Bach. If you’d like to get ahead of the game, this is what we’ll be doing.

Marked Scores

The marked score will be provided over Christmas, in time for the Spring rehearsals, but below is a link to the unmarked score for anyone who would like to use it on their tablets. As the edition is still in copyright, and this page is open to the public, the document is password protected. Annabel will be sending round an email shortly with the password to view it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.

UNMARKED SCORE.

Learning Guides

We’ll be providing plenty of resources for the Spring term to help you with learning the piece, including lots of language pronunciation guides for the German (we’ll also be organising some language coaching for the choir too)!

In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.

– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

The recommended recording on Spotify HERE. For those who don’t use Spotify, this is the recording by John Eliot Gardiner and The Monteverdi Choir (2011).

The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.

Of course, the other recording that’s worth listening to is the BBC Prom, where it was performed this year. It’s available on BBC Sounds HERE.

Future Events

One last plug for the newCHOIR vocal workshop on Saturday 14th September, led by guest conductor Janet Lincé – if you’ve worked with Janet before, you’ll know how brilliant she is, so this is not one to miss! Places are very limited, so do check it out HERE.

And... CRAG concerts are back! Do go and support this wonderful concert series.

This Week’s listening

More lovely dissonance from Bach – one of his cantatas for Alto: Like the John Passion, it has an absolutely arresting opening, filled with wonderful crunches. Check out Widerstehe doch der Sünde HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 18th September
– Ben

Hello everyone! What an absolute pleasure it was to see you all again last week, and especially wonderful to welcome all our new members – Mark told me in the pub we had 94 people at that rehearsal, and 13 more to come! It’s so great to be back and beginning our work on the Spring ’25 project – Bach’s St John Passion. Below is the update on what we covered (in case you missed the rehearsal), what we’ll do next week, and lots of other useful bits, so thanks for reading!

Importantly, below is the list of dates for the year. Please get these in your diaries so you don’t miss out on any rehearsals or concerts. You can also find this on the ‘Rehearsals’ section of the ‘Members’ part of the website HERE.

What we did – Wednesday 4th September

As I said, an excellent first rehearsal, and we hopefully now have a good overview of Bach’s musical style in both the Chorales and the Chorus numbers, as well as both a broader overview of the opening and ending of the work, plus the smaller building-blocks of the first movement.

• We began with Number 3 – page 28. Our first introduction to a chorale. We learnt the notes, then went through the German pronunciation, and sang it in English to truly understand the words.
• Then we did Number 40 – page 216. This is the end of the piece, and our final chorale.
• After this we looked at Number 37 – page 200.
• Following the break we worked on Number 1 – page 1. This is our opening chorus, and we heard how arresting and painful the introduction is, then learnt each little building block of music (motif), and how they pass between each part of the choir. We also learnt the structure of a Da Capo Chorus which, after the ‘B’ section, jumps back to the start to repeat the beginning.
• Then we saw our first ‘Turba Chorus’ – the people’s chorus – Numbers 2b (p24) and 2d (p26). These are dialogues between the Evangelist (narrator) and us, the people. Lots of energy is needed for this!
• Finally we finished with Number 5 (p31) – our final chorus of the day.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look at and listen to the opening 5 movements, and the final 2 chorales of the piece.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 11th September

We’ll continue our overview of the work, beginning with Number 39 (p204), which is a Da Capo chorus at the end of the work which we didn’t have time to cover last week.

Following this, we’ll be discussing one of the major sequences in the work, which provides a structure to the whole piece! We’ll sing Nos. 18b (p88) & 23f (p140), then Nos. 21b (p102) & 25b (p152), then Nos. 21d (p107) & 23d (p133), and Nos. 21f (p113) & 23b (p124) before finishing with the focus of entire work – No. 22 (p123)

Below is the rehearsal plan for the September rehearsals of the Bach. If you’d like to get ahead of the game, this is what we’ll be doing.

Marked Scores

The marked score will be provided over Christmas, in time for the Spring rehearsals, but below is a link to the unmarked score for anyone who would like to use it on their tablets. As the edition is still in copyright, and this page is open to the public, the document is password protected. Annabel will be sending round an email shortly with the password to view it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.

UNMARKED SCORE.

Learning Guides

We’ll be providing plenty of resources for the Spring term to help you with learning the piece, including lots of language pronunciation guides for the German (we’ll also be organising some language coaching for the choir too)!

In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.

– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

The recommended recording on Spotify HERE.

The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.

Cotswold Youth Choir

We had our first get together of the season with an open afternoon called ‘Musical Madness’ on Sunday. It was great fun, and we’ve hopefully got a few more members joining us, so the choir is slowly growing.

However, we’d love to get as many young people singing as possible! This is your youth choir, and we should all be really proud of it. So please keep sharing our poster to anyone and everyone you know to encourage as many young singers to join as possible!

Future Events

Two events for you this week.

– Firstly, one of my other choirs, newCHOIR, are running a vocal workshop on Saturday 14th September, led by guest conductor Janet Lincé – if you’ve worked with Janet before, you’ll know how brilliant she is, so this is not one to miss! Places are now limited, so do check it out HERE.

– Secondly, Oxford Orpheus is running a workshop/concert on Verdi’s incredible Requiem. You can check it out HERE.

This Week’s listening

... is simply to listen to the opening of the Bach St John Passion... one of the recordings above should do! Enjoy the pain and anguish he pours out in the opening instrumental... wow!

See you all on Wednesday 11th September
– Ben

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re well and have had a lovely start to the summer break! It’s very odd not having rehearsals every Wednesday, so I’m looking forward to getting going again in September. In the meantime, I hope you all have an excellent summer.

Below are a few things, including feedback from the past term, as well as a few forthcoming events. I’ll be sharing some Notes towards the end of the summer holidays, so stay tuned for that in a month’s time or so.

Concert Feedback

Well, it feels like an age ago, but I neglected to provide any feedback as the term drew to a close, so I wanted to share my thoughts with you all now.

Firstly, thank you all for such a lovely concert on the 15th June! It went incredibly well, I thought, and the event as a whole was hugely successful! A shame about the weather – 2 out of 3 ‘picnic and Pimms’ style concerts had great weather, so we were bound to get rain at some point. However, this didn’t suppress the enthusiasm, and we kicked the first half of the programme off with a bang. I really enjoyed all of the pieces in the first half, and it was so great to bring it all together. A highlight for me really was the Walford Davies – 83 people singing Anglican psalms was quite something, and it was a really touching performance of the music. A special thanks and congratulations to the semi-chorus for their performance of Parsons’s Ave Maria, which I thought was incredibly musical and expressive, and gave a really lovely contrast to the larger works. It would be remiss of me not to mention the Weir, which I thought was the weakest of the first half – we weren’t entirely together all the way through, but it was certainly different (and exciting) to get the audience involved in the singing!

The star of the show was of course the Elgar, which we absolutely nailed! I thought there were some really special moments in it, and you really captured all of the different characters each movement asked for; the lively and playful first movement, the slushy yet tender third movement, and the frantic final movement – it was all fantastic! A particular ‘well-done’ to the tenors and basses in movement 5 for the gorgeous blend and excellent ensemble we had! Again, a couple of moments which could’ve possible gone better a second time round, but the quality of singing was really brilliant!

Of course the concert would have been nothing without Rowena, whose playing both in the concert and throughout the term has been exceptional! Rowena, your Farewell to Stromness in the first half was spellbinding, and we cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you put into learning the Elgar! We’re so lucky to have Ro play for us each week.

Finally, a massive “thank you” to you all for the hard work you put into learning the music, allowing us to do something rather different in focussing on high-quality ensemble-driven singing. I really think it’s amazing what we achieved, and in such a short time. It’s the biggest the choir has been in the summer term for many years, which was absolutely brilliant as it allows us to keep developing as an ensemble! Finally finally: enormous “thank yous” to everyone who helps out not only at the concert (moving chairs, selling programmes, providing refreshments, sourcing venues, etc.) but to those who help out regularly behind the scenes ensuring rehearsals and concerts can happen! Thank you Committee for your dedication to the choir, and all our weekly volunteers.

Social

It was lovely to see so many at the end of term social too, what a lovely evening of merriment! This is our second social in the last few years, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. I’m sure we’ll do another next year too. Thank you to Helene and the team of helpers for organising this too!

Cotswold Youth Choir

We had our inaugural Cotswold Youth Choir concert shortly after our own, and it was really wonderful to see so many CNCS members there supporting our youth choir! The CYC members performed so well, and I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved in 10 weeks; I’m sure you all are too! The Cotswold Youth Choir is OUR choir – it’s incredible to have our own youth choir as part of the CNCS family. If you weren’t able to pop along to their first concert, do come and support them in their next concert – you’ll be so proud of them!

Chippy Festival

And our final event of the term was the Chippy Festival, in which around 25 singers performed a few numbers from our summer programme in front of the whole town on a stage outside the town hall. Certainly a different event to what we normally do, but it was great fun! It was a great opportunity to sing mic’d up, and despite the technical issues with the keyboard, it was great to sing for the town. It was also our first opportunity to sing in a joint event with the Cotswold Youth Choir – something we’ll certainly be doing in the future. Thank you all for singing and supporting.

Dates for next year

Below is a PDF of the dates for next year. We’re still confirming a couple of venues, but the dates shouldn’t now change. Please do go though and put the performances/events (marked in green) in your diary.

You’ll notice we start again on Wednesday 4th September with a look ahead to Spring with the Bach St John Passion. This is our major concert of the season, so please do come to these rehearsals before we start looking at our Christmas music!

Bach – St John Passion

As I mentioned above, Bach’s incredible St John Passion is our major concert of the year! We’ve booked some top soloists and an exceptional professional baroque orchestra, so it’s really not one to miss! I ‘d like to have a huge choir for this, and the whole year, so please encourage anyone you think might be interested to come along and join us for the exciting 2024/25 season!

I believe our wonderful librarian Susannah has been in touch via email with everyone about scores for the next term, but if you missed it, or are a new member, I’m sure another email will go out just before the start of term, so we can make sure everyone has a score.

In advance of us learning it, there are a couple of chances for you to hear it:

The first is a programme on BBC iPlayer, as Gareth Malone brings together a scratch choir to learn and perform the piece. A great watch, and an intimate look at the piece. Check it out HERE.

The second is at the BBC proms this summer! If you’ve not been to a Prom before, I’d highly recommend a trip down to London to watch these amazing concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. Not one to miss! You can find out more HERE.

Walford Davies – A Short Requiem

Sunday 28th July 2024 marks the 110th anniversary of the declaration of the First World War. For those who sang the few movements of Walford Davies’s A Short Requiem in our summer concert, you may have noticed the piece was composed in memory of all those who lost their lives in the war. I thought it would be an excellent occasion to get a small choir of friends and family together to perform the piece as a whole as part of a service, and Hook Norton church very kindly offered to host.

So, on Sunday 28th July, it would be lovely to see some friendly faces in the congregation for a short service followed by refreshments in St Peter’s Church, Hook Norton. All details are on the poster below. As it’s a church service, there’s obviously no ticket fee, but there is a retiring collection for Christian Aid’s appeal in Ukraine.

Other Events

Two more events to look forward to!

The first is a workshop run by newCHOIR, which will be led by Janet Lincé and focusses on diction! If you’ve not worked with Janet before, she’s an incredible vocal technician, so this will be an excellent workshop to be a part of. You can find tickets HERE.

The second is a Come and Sing Handel’s Messiah with Henley Choral Society. If you’d like to sign up, follow the link HERE.

That’s all for the moment, I’ll write again towards the end of the summer. I’ve really enjoyed this season, we’ve achieved a great deal and performed some exceptional concerts. Here’s to a great 2024/25 season!

Have a lovely summer!
– Ben

Hello everyone! I know these notes are close to our final rehearsal, so don’t worry if you don’t get a chance to look at them before the rehearsal or concert, they’re just refreshing what we spoke about on Wednesday. I’m so excited about this concert, it’s going to be great fun, and there’s some exciting bits below.

What we’ve done this term

We’ve had some really good rehearsals this term, covering a lot of the music in great depth. While note-wise this programme isn’t too hard, it has introduced us to some new concepts and styles of singing as a choir, as well as help develop our ensemble, tuning, and musicality as a whole, which has all been very exciting to see progress. We can apply a lot of this to the exposed a Capella pieces we’re singing, and give a great performance to the psalms. The Elgar has been fun and will be a lively ending to the concert.

To catch up: If you missed any rehearsals, please ensure you are familiar with the music for the concert.

What we’ll do – Friday 14th June

We’ll begin by working on the Bavarian Highlands, in particular movement 6 (Marksmen) and movement 5 (The Alm), following on from Wednesday’s rehearsal. We’ll also do a bit of work on Of Old Sat Freedom. Following this, with our remaining time, we’ll top-and-tail as much of the programme as possible, so we can get a good sense of it in the venue tonight, so tomorrow’s rehearsal will just be about firming it up and building confidence pre-concert.

At the end of the rehearsal, we’ll run the Parsons with the semi-chorus to get a feel for it in the church.

A reminder that tonight’s rehearsal is 7:30-9:30pm in St Mary’s Church, but please arrive from 7pm to get seated!

Concert Arrangements

The rehearsal on concert day should (fingers crossed) be very relaxed, as most of the music is in a good state. We’ll run things in reverse order, starting with the Elgar.

Timings: Rehearsal is 2pm-5pm. Picnic in the church grounds starts from 6:30pm. The concert will begin at 7:30pm, so be seated by 7:20pm.

Location: St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton (bottom of the hill) – there’s limited parking for those who absolutely require it, so please park in the larger car parks if at all possible.

Concert dress: All black with a splash of colour – something summery, so we can encourage the sun to stay out for the picnic and Pimms!

PLEASE SELL MORE TICKETS! It would be great to get more people along, so keep selling for tomorrow! The link to tickets is HERE.

Music for this term

The booklets for the first half are yours, so you can keep those. If you’ve bought the Elgar, you can keep that too (obviously). Susannah will explain at the rehearsals what to do with the hire copies of the Elgar, but if you know you’re not able to make the concert and still have the music, please rub out your markings and return it to us on the evening of the Social, or directly to Susannah.

Learning Guides

Your final chance to go over any bits at home using the learning guides below!

Fran in the altos very kindly found an MP3 file online of Of Old Sat Freedom, so please listen to it to familiarise yourself. It’s available HERE.

From the Bavarian Highlands (and a lot of the other music) is available FREE OF CHARGE on John Fletcher Music, HERE.

Most of the music can be found on my Spotify playlist HERE.

If you don’t like Spotify, you can find all of the music on YouTube, including a good recording of the Elgar (accompanied by orchestra) HERE.

Post-Concert Dates

A few dates for your diary, as discussed on Wednesday, and have been shared previously:

CNCS Social: Wednesday 19th June, 7:30pm-9:30pm, Town Hall – following our concert, we’ll have a final get-together for the season, which consists of a bring-and-share dinner, and a chance to socialise. If you’d like to perform anything, this would be a fun chance to do something for friends! Helene in the sopranos is organising this, and an email was sent out a few weeks ago about it.

Cotswold Youth Choir: Wednesday 26th June, 7:30pm-8pm, Town Hall – OUR youth choir, the Cotswold Youth Choir, will have their inaugural performance. It’s a chance for the kids to showcase what they’ve learnt over their 10 rehearsals, and a chance for you all to see CYC in its first term! We’d love you all to be there to support our young singers!

Chipping Norton Festival: Sunday 30th June, 1:30pm-2pm, Town Hall – It would be great to see as many people from CNCS representing the choir for the Festival on Sunday 30th. We’ll be performing a couple of pieces from the summer programme, and CYC will also perform a couple of songs after us. A great chance to show the town how amazing we are! Please arrive before our set at 1:45pm (I’ve suggested 1:30pm above), so we can get ourselves in order.

Next Term

Next term is an exciting one! We’ll begin on the 4th of September by looking ahead to our Spring ’25 term by beginning our work on Bach’s almighty St John Passion. From October onwards we’ll be working on our Christmas concert on the 14th December, which will feature Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (SATB version), alongside other Christmas carols for harp/organ.

Susannah will be sending out an email to you all before the summer about how to hire/buy these scores, so we can get cracking in September.

Other Events

It’s that time of year when there’s a lot going on! So, below are posters for a few concerts in which members are performing following our concert, as well as the details for two exciting performance opportunities. Do check them out!

Beethoven’s 9th Symphony: The Trinity Camerata are performing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the 14th July, and are looking for some remaining choral spaces to be filled by strong singers (preferably who have performed it before). If you’re interested and feel comfortable doing it on one rehearsal on the day, you can find more information HERE.

Dartington: Peter Hunt runs a fabulous choral weekend in Dartington each year, as many of you will know. It’s a fabulous weekend, and certainly one worth going to! If you’re interested, speak to members of the choir who have been before, and check out the PDF document below.

Sorry I’ve not posted much this term, it’s all been very busy. However, it’s been really enjoyable to write to you all again, so I’ll do my best to keep it up regularly over the summer and in the new term. Thank you all for your hard work and for bearing with! See you later...
– Ben

Good morning friends, I hope you’re well and have had a good start to the week. It’s been all go here, and we’ve had a really great start to the term, covering all the music (some of it already in good detail) in the first 2 weeks!

What we did – Wednesdays 17th & 24th April

In the first 2 rehearsals we saw all of the music, so the most important thing to do, if you missed either, is to sing through the pieces with a recording, and get used to how they’re structured.

• In week 1 we went through the booklet, looking at some of the new pieces, and understanding how they work. Particular ones to note are Parratt Give Rest, O Christ, which asks for a flowing, chant-like movement; Cusins Of Old Sat Freedom, where we had some awkward key changes; and the psalm settings in A Short Requiem by Walford Davies.
• In the psalms, we learnt how to read the chant and how it related to the text, but we also began to feel it though it was speech – I’ve written out the ‘rhythms’ of the text to help, but it’s a fun challenge to be able to use the psalm as written.
• In week 2 we sang through the Elgar From the Bavarian Highlands, getting to grips with all the styles and really beginning to put in some good detail from the start! Elgar is one of the first major composers to include EVERY detail in his music, so we must follow it all!

To catch up: If you missed these rehearsals, please sing through as much of the music as possible at home.

What we’ll do – Wednesday 1st May

Goodness me, May already!

We’ll start with My Guardian Angel by Weir, and then we’ll look at The Marksmen, and bash through some notes and entries in that. After the break we’ll look at Of Old Sat Freedom, and end with the 1st and 2nd movements of the Elgar, and finish with a sing through of Parsons’s Ave Maria as a whole choir.

Semi-Chorus

I’ve been asking for volunteers for a small semi-chorus to perform the Parsons Ave Maria, and to support the audience in the Weir. We’ve had a good number of volunteers, but it’s not too late to join.

We’ll spend 15 minutes after the rehearsal (and our whole-choir run through) going through this, so thank you for staying on.

I’ve got the below people down to sing – apologies if I’ve missed anyone, please do drop me an email and I’ll update it!

Marked Scores

You’ll notice all the markings are in the booklet for you, so you only need to mark up the Elgar!
I’ve tried to help with the number of markings by putting ‘essentials’ in red, and ‘desirables’ in blue.
Thank you for putting the markings in, it really does help with rehearsals.

Learning Guides

A lot of learning guides for this concert are available online.

From the Bavarian Highlands (and a lot of the other music) is available FREE OF CHARGE on John Fletcher Music, HERE.

Listening Guides

As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.

Most of the music can be found on my Spotify playlist HERE.

If you don’t like Spotify, you can find all of the music on YouTube, including a good recording of the Elgar (accompanied by orchestra) HERE.

Cotswold Youth Choir

We’ve had our first two rehearsals, but it would be great to get more kids along – please keep publicising this!

Future Events

I’m running a G&S Come-and-Sing with the Cumnor Choral Society in a few weeks! It’ll be a great day, and would be lovely to see some Chippy friends there!

This Week’s listening

Last night I played in a chamber concert in Oxford – it was great! The piece I was in was Beethoven’s Octet for Winds and it’s absolutely fiendish in places, especially on modern instruments. Have fun listening to the piece HERE.

See you all on Wednesday 1st May!
– Ben

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all well and have had a lovely Easter break? I was hoping to get these notes out to you sooner but end-of-term-itis, a busy Easter, and a much needed break meant I never got round to writing these, so thank you for your patience.

Below is feedback for the Spring concert, information about next term, some exciting events coming up, and plenty more! Thank you for reading these notes, and I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday 17th for our first rehearsal back!

Concert Feedback

Well, what can I say about that concert other than “Wow!” – it was amazing! A huge well done to you all for pulling it out the bag. From the beginning I’d been saying ‘I’ll all come together with the band on the day’, and I was right! You all absolutely nailed it!

The Shearing was great fun, and an excellent way to start the concert. It all felt relaxed and joyful, but committed and exciting at the same time. The first two movements in particular I thought were brilliantly sung, and the balance between parts was spot on; the text was really clear too, in the T/B section of Live with me, and the soprano solis in When daffodils. It was a lover was full of life and just a pleasure to romp through with you all – I could feel the audience’s smiles through the back of my head! Who is Silvia was just stunning! So beautifully sung with a real sense of line and phrasing. It was genuinely incredibly moving to conduct such a lush sound coming from 80 people, all committed to making the best quality sound possible. The ensemble was great, and really paid off doing all that work in rehearsals. Fie on sinful fantasy was short and sweet, but incredibly accurate! Thank you to Callum for his excellent glissando in this one, haha! And finally Hey, ho, the wind and the rain wrapped the Shearing up brilliantly, and everyone’s bright faces at the end perfectly encapsulated the piece. It would be impossible for me to talk about the Shearing and not mention Rowena, who’s accompanying in the concert, and through term, was impeccable! We’re so lucky to have you Ro, and it was a pleasure to perform the Shearing with you in-concert! Thank you for all your hard work in rehearsals and sectionals – we’d be lost without you!

A massive thank you also to Karen and her quartet for playing so wonderfully in the concert! What a joy it was to hear you in your element in that set you played! Most of the choir will know Karen in her capacity as an alto in the choir, but how incredible it was to hear you ‘do your day job’ and play for us! Thank you also for fixing such a good band – the solos were so much fun to watch, and everyone accompanied the choir so respectfully, supporting us throughout the Todd expertly!

The highlight of the evening was, naturally, the Todd! You absolutely smashed it!! So much energy. So much focus. And all the hard work you put in over the term paid off immeasurably in the final performance. I thought the opening of the Kyrie set the mood for the work, feeling confident and committed. The energy continued to build in the movement, and although there were a couple of less-confident moments, you captured the style of the movement perfectly. The Gloria was on the whole absolutely excellent, and each of the sections were handled brilliantly. I particularly enjoyed the 5/8 section which had an awesome lilt and felt playful yet grounded at the same time. The Credo was a lot of fun and we really gave it our all in that heavy bluesy style. The softer bits too were very well sung – looking back on it we could have maybe made it a bit quieter, but that’s something to work on for next time. All the fast stuff felt, on the whole, secure, so well done for this! My word, the Sanctus was beautiful! Sops and altos in particular, well done for the opening, it was so lovely! I want to commend you in particular for your direction in this movement; it felt like there was a great structure to it, and took us on a well-rounded journey. Then the Benedictus was, of course, amazing fun. From the off you could tell it had a fun and somewhat cheeky mood, so thank you basses for getting us going with that! With each entry it got more and more raucous, and the audience could feel that electric energy! All the key changes worked perfectly, and the “Hosanna”s had a really exciting buzz to them, leading to an epic climax at the end. And finally the Agnus Dei – this movement always felt ‘lacking in direction’ to me, and to those I spoke to about it. However, with the band, and the energy you all brought, it really came alive and made sense! What an amazing way to end the concert. I must apologise to those who have said they felt that the final fast section was quick... it was... I just got way too excited because it sounded so amazing!

And a final huge congratulations to Becca Wilkins who sang so brilliantly in the Mass. So many people have commented on how great it was to have Becca with us, all of which I’ve passed on to her. She’s so grateful for the love and support, and if you’d like to stay in touch with what she’s up to, sign up to her mailing list HERE.

A massive thank you to all the Committee and helpers who work so hard to make these events work. Without the dedicated team of people who run the concerts and help with the logistics of everything, we really couldn’t do any of this. We have such an amazing team of people who work behind the scenes, so next time you see one of them doing their hard work, please thank them!

Another great concert everyone, here’s to the next!

Summer Term

We begin rehearsing for our summer term this week, and I can’t wait to introduce you to some fun and exciting music. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and as you’ll see from the music we’ll be trying some new things.

Rehearsals begin on Wednesday 17th April.
We’ll take a break for half term on Wednesday 29th May.
We’ve got the Friday evening rehearsal in the church on Friday 14th June.
The concert is on Saturday 15th June in St Mary’s Church, Chipping Norton. The rehearsal on the day will be 2pm-5pm.
This concert is like the previous summer ones with me, so bring a picnic for the churchyard, and expect lots of Pimms!

We’ve got another performance opportunity on Sunday 30th June as part of the Chipping Norton Festival. The performance will begin at 13:45, and will be a chance for our new Cotswold Youth Choir to join us. Please save this date in the diary!

As part of the summer term, I’m looking for a small semi-chorus to sing one of our pieces, Robert Parson’s Ave Maria. If you’d be interested in this, please let me know. You’ve got until the 3rd rehearsal to let me know (1st May).

Marked Scores

On Wednesday you’ll get a booklet with the music in, as well as Elgar’s From the Bavarian Highlands. Both are available here, so please do put the markings in the Elgar once you’ve got it (I’ve already done the booklet for you).

Just a quick note on the marked scores – if you have a hire copy, please try to only put essential markings into your copies. we had a very quick turnaround for the Todd scores, and had an amazing team of people rubbing out all 70 copies... and it took the best part of a day between 10 of us. I’ve tried to help with this in my markings, putting ‘essentials’ in red, and ‘desirables’ in blue. Thank you for putting the markings in, it really does help with rehearsals.

Cotswold Youth Choir

This week we also begin rehearsals with the Cotswold Youth Choir! It would be great to get as many young people along as possible, so please do share the poster far and wide it’s not too late to sign up!

Future Events

Some excellent events coming up, so do check them out below.

There are also 2 more amazing opportunities I’ve been asked to share:

The Music Summer School and Festival

Dartington Trust’s ChoralFest

This Week’s listening

I wanted to share with you a lovely piece from the concert I’m doing with newCHOIR this term – it’s a setting of the Magnificat by Durante, formerly attributed to Pergolesi. An excellent work filled with joy, slush, and Baroque goodness.

Listen HERE.

See you all on Wednesday to get started with our summer term!
– Ben

Hello everyone! The final Notes before the concert! This term has been so much fun, but certainly really hard work, so I wanted to thank you all for your commitment and dedication to making it sound amazing! Wednesday was sounding fab (more on this below), but there’s still time for any last-minute practice in order to feel really confident for Sunday. Please do check out the information below.

What We Did – Wednesday 20th March

• It was good to start with the Shearing in order to get used to the space. We began with the last section of Who is Sylvia, listening carefully to each other for the blend and ensemble.
• Then we worked on the text of Fie on Sinful fantasy, projecting the consonants down the church, and on watching for the rit. at the end.
• We then did a bit of work on Hey, ho, the wind, focusing mainly on the chorus and some of the tenor/bass sections. Please make sure there’s no “with A” – the text is just “with”. Tenors and Basses, please look over your entries as we’ll spend a bit of time on this on Sunday.
• After this we went back to the start and did the odd bit of Live with me and be my love. These included the tuning of S/A chords and the projection of the text at Letter E and F, and then a spot of note checking at Letter I. Please make sure you feel comfortable with this for Sunday as it’ll need to be confident by then!
• We started When Daffodils, with nothing much needed here, other than balancing the lower voices a little less loudly than the melody. Careful Sopranos with the tuning on the b-e leaps in bar 23.
• Then we did a spot check of It was a lover – please make sure you sing the correct verses at the beginning!!! I think I’ll cry if anyone gets that wrong... Careful of the rhythm on page 20.
• After this we worked a lot on the Kyrie, ensuring the pulse was solid throughout and the entries were confident, especially in the Basses! Basses, please ensure you have a double espresso before the second half so pages 6 and 7 are full of energy!!! We also worked on the ending of the Kyrie, making sure the text was right on page 16, and the sop/alto line on page 17 was right and confident.
• We sang through the Gloria, then went into some good detail for the final entry, and some of the T/B notes beforehand. We spent some good time solidifying the “cum Sancto” entrance on the top of page 26, and we also went through the T/B notes on page 19 (which are the same on page 25).
• We ended with a bit of work on the Credo, working on the fast sections, filling them with energy, especially with the Tenor and Bass entrances. We also went through the key changes from page 45 to the end, and noted that they are almost identical to the end of the Agnus Dei, just down a semitone.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look through the above sections.

Poster and Tickets

We’re almost there but it’s not too late to promote the concert, so please do one final share of the link to tickets and the poster with friends, family, etc.. So far we’ve sold 73 tickets, so it would be great to sell more! Tickets are HERE.

Todd Learning Guides

This is your last chance to use these Learning Guides to aid your work at home on the Todd. I know it’s a tricky piece, but it’ll be a performance to remember, so please make sure you’re happy with your parts at home!

Oxford University Press put together free learning guides for each part! Find them HERE.

You can find learning guides for the Shearing on previous Conductor’s Notes.

Forthcoming Events

Two events other than ours this weekend, both on the same day... but I think I know which one I’d rather go to...

1. My chamber choir, newCHOIR, have our concert on Saturday 23rd March, singing some wonderful music, including the incredible Serenade to Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, alongside a host of old and new music. You’ll see some familiar faces there too, as 2 of our current members sing in the choir!
2. The Brackley Jubilee Choir also have their concert that day. Great repertoire accompanied by one of our old university lecturers!

This Week’s Listening...

... is just a plea for you to listen to the Todd, so it’s fresh in your minds for Sunday! Thanks all.

See you all on Sunday!

–Ben

Good evening friends, I hope you’re all well and had a lovely weekend if I didn’t see you. Lots of good things from the rehearsal, feedback from our excellent performance on Saturday, and a load of forthcoming events... do read on...

What We Did – Wednesday 6th March

• We started with some tutti ‘spot-checks’ of the Benedictus in advance of the Festival. This mainly consisted of the groupings of voices which sing together from figure 76 to the end, especially the Alto line at the top of page 67. We also ensured the confidence with some of the key changes.
• Following this we did some work on the blend of sound in Who is Sylvia by mixing up in pairs to hear other parts. Well done with this exercise.
• Then we split into sectionals to go through the Gloria from page 24 to the end. Very important to ensure notes and rhythms are secure at this stage.
• After the break we worked in sectionals on the Agnus Dei, trying to get the independent musical lines to feel more secure and confident.
• We put together the end of the Gloria in tutti, which was a lot more secure.
• Finally, the smaller choir of singers for the Festival came together to prepare for the Festival performance.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please sing ensure the Benedictus and Who is Sylvia are completely secure, and then go through your parts for the Gloria and Agnus Dei.

Chipping Norton Music Festival Feedback

Very well done for our performance on Saturday! I think it was a roaring success. The feedback is below for you to read (good luck), but if you were there for the feedback she essentially said exactly what she wrote.

From my point of view, I’m very happy indeed. The Shearing was beautiful, with lovely vowel qualities, a good blend of sound, and exceptionally well-controlled lines of music; especially impressive as we hadn’t even had a warm up! People said how classy it sounded, which is fantastic!

The Todd was full of life and energy, and had all those brilliant characteristics we’ve been working on over the past few weeks. A huge congratulations to Sian and her epic solo! Basses, we got out by a beat, and I know exactly where and how it happened so we’ll make sure that can’t happen again on Wednesday – however, it still had so much confidence and energy and life that I really can’t complain too much, haha! Huge congratulations all on achieving a ‘Distinction’ mark!

Poster and Tickets

It’s getting close now, so please share the link to tickets and the poster with friends, family, pets, etc.. So far we’ve sold 34 tickets... time to sell more! Tickets are HERE.

The poster is available below, and physical copies can be picked up on Wednesday!

Todd Learning Guides

Your last chance to use the Learning Guides to aid your work at home on the Todd. I understand how tricky it is, but my gosh it’ll be a performance to remember, so please make sure you’re happy with your parts at home!

Oxford University Press put together free learning guides for each part! Find them HERE.

Forthcoming Events

It’s a busy time of year with lots on, so check out the amazing array of events below.

1. This weekend you’re spoilt for choice as to concerts. As well as events in the Festival, the Banbury Symphony Orchestra have their concert on Saturday 16th March. We’ve got sops and altos in this orchestra.
2. The very same evening (Saturday 16th March), the Burford Orchestra has its concert. Another lovely programme! One of our altos plays in this orchestra.
3. The following weekend, my chamber choir, newCHOIR, have our concert on Saturday 23rd March, the day before our Jazz concert. You’ll see some familiar faces there too, as 2 of our current members sing in the choir!
4. Finally, in the near future, there’s a Come-and-Sing day led by John Rutter. A very exciting thing to be a part of, so check it out!

This Week’s Listening...

Some more fun jazz for you – this week, from the legendary Dave Brubeck. Most famous for his piece Take Five, Brubeck’s sense of rhythm is second to none. This short piece, Unsquare Dance is immensely fun, playing around with a crazy 7/8 pulse. Check it out HERE.

See you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all well and have had a good start to the week. A little bit of info for you all, as well as feedback from our run. Thanks for reading.

What We Did – Wednesday 28th February

• We started by refreshing the ending of the Kyrie, with its changes in time, and scrunchy chords at the end. Worth doing.
• Then we ran the Mass in Blue:
  • The Kyrie started off well, we just need to work on confidence of entries, especially at figure 4 in SAT. Last bar of page 8 needs more confidence too, but the sound was good when going. Please note the text at the top of page 16... last time I’ll ask for this. The ending was good as it was fresh in our minds.
  • The Gloria started off well once we’d found the tempo. Rhythms were excellent throughout, well done! A little more confidence needed with some notes, so we’ll go through those in sectionals. The 5/8 section was brilliant! The ending needs a lot of work, as it’s been a few weeks since we last did it.
  • The start of the Credo was great – full of energy, dynamics were perfect, and it had a great vibe. We still need to work on the timings on page 36. Be ready for all entries from figure 40 – text here is really important. We’ll work on the changes of pages 43 – 48 – these are tricky!
  • The Sanctus was, on the whole, very beautiful. Some lovely long lines through here helped, we just need, again, confidence in starting the entries. We’ll clarify a few moments in here, such as the basses being higher than the tenors bottom of page 52.
  • The Benedictus was fab! A few minor tweaks and this will be great for the Festival and the concert. I loved the energy it had, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We’ll do a tiny bit of work on the entries at the end from page 64 onwards.
  • Finally, the Agnus Dei had some lovely moments in it, but we need to ensure the musical lines are confident and flowing. We’ll do a lot of work on this in the next few weeks. Similarly, the ending is something we all know (it’s almost identical to the Credo), but we need the confidence to sing it.
• After this we did a tiny bit of work on the Benedictus and Who is Sylvia for the Festival.

Thank you all for your post-it notes with sections you’d like to work on – I’ll be incorporating these into the rehearsals.

Thank you also for the questions about your Cotswold Youth Choir. There’s such enthusiasm for this, and we look forward to keeping you all updated.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please sing through the whole of the Mass in Blue at home, to get a feel for going through it from start to end.

• We’ll start with some spot checks of the Benedictus for the Festival.
• Then we’ll do some blending work on Who is Sylvia, also for the Festival.
• After this we’ll spit into sectionals to go through the ending of the Gloria (pages 24 onwards) and work on the Agnus Dei (start, and ending). S/A will be with me, T/B will be with Ro.
• At the end of the rehearsal, about 21:10, I’ll ask all those not singing in the Festival to leave, so we can get used to the smaller sized group who are singing on Saturday. We’ll run Who is Sylvia and the Benedictus.

Chipping Norton Music Festival

Here’s all the information you’ll need:

• It’s in the Chipping Norton Town Hall.
• Our set begins at 12:30. Please be there by 12:20, so we can get seated. We’re last on, and then there will be the feedback session.
• The music we’re singing is Who is Sylvia and the Benedictus. You won’t need a folder.
• The dress code is all black with a splash of colour – something like a scarf, tie, or earrings, for example.

Poster and Tickets

The tickets are now live on the website, so get sharing with family, friends, and all your contacts! Let’s get a good audience for this one! Check out tickets HERE.

The poster is also available, so share that digitally too, and physical copies should be with us for next week’s rehearsal!

Todd Learning Guides

OUP have published free learning guides for the Todd! Please do use them! You can also find it on our good friend Choralia.

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Forthcoming Events

There’s loads going in in the Chipping Norton Music Festival over the next couple of weeks; too many to list, in fact. But, here are some highlights!

I’m sure you’ll see familiar faces at Folk night! Then, our friends at The Adderbury Ensemble have a couple of concerts. And, you can go and hear some of our very own members singing in the NC3 concert on Saturday 16th March. Plenty to get stuck into, so do check out the Festival website HERE.

This Week’s Listening...

A few people have said how much you enjoyed the Bobby McFerrin video from last week, so here’s another... It’s an incredible video of him singing Bach’s famous Prelude in C major. It also features the Gounod Ave Maria sung over the top by the audience... how on earth he does it all I have no idea! It’s well worth the listen HERE.

See you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Hello everyone, another great rehearsal on Wednesday! I hope, like me, you’re really beginning to feel it coming together. Quite a lot of stuff below, so please do give it all a good read through over the weekend.

What We Did – Wednesday 21st February

• We started by refreshing the themes of the Credo, including the very opening (keeping it energetic and moving forwards), then the main theme (also solidifying the notes in the chords), and finally the fast section in the middle (making sure we got all the text in and it’s really accurate).
• Then we sang through the Sanctus (a lot remembered from last week, well done), as well as the Benedictus. This was full of energy and a really exciting sing!
• After the break we split into sectionals to go through moments in the Gloria, as well as Hey, ho, the wind and the rain. Good work here, firming up notes, rhythms, and tuning in chords. T/B did well with the Shearing, we just need to prepare for each verse by looking ahead.
• Finally, we came together to sing Live with me and be my love and Hey, ho. A good look at this, working on the odd chord and melodic line, and the energy of the songs.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look through the Sanctus and Benedictus, go through moments in the Gloria you find tricky, and look at the 1st and 7th movements of the Shearing.

• This week we’ll be running the Todd. We’ll begin with a small refresher of the Kyrie, and then run the Todd.
• After the break, we’ll look at the Benedictus and Who is Sylvia.

I’m going to bring along some post-it notes – after the run, I’ll have a clear idea of what we still need to work on, but I’d also like to hear from you if there are any bits you’re really stuck on. Please do let me know on these post-its!

Tomorrow, it’s exactly a month to go until the concert – keep working hard at home, it’s really coming together and will be a very exciting concert!

Cotswold Youth Choir Q&A

For the last 15 minutes of the rehearsal on the 28th Feb, we’ll be having a Q&A about the Youth Choir project. A number of people have asked me and Annabel for an update and to answer your questions, so we thought this would be useful. It is OUR youth choir, and we want you all to be involved and proud of it, so if you have any questions, queries, or concerns, let’s have a chat next week.

Chipping Norton Music Festival

Just to confirm, we’ll be singing Who is Sylvia and the Benedictus (in that order) in the Festival this year. We’re singing on Saturday 9th March, and we’re the last on in the Senior Choirs slot at 12:30, so please turn up by 12:20 so we can all get seated for the warm up.
For those who haven’t done it before, it’s in the Town Hall and is a really great occasion to perform and get feedback which we can apply to our concert! Please let Mark know when you sign in next week if you can make it so we can ensure we know final numbers.

Poster and Tickets

The tickets are now live on the website, so get sharing with family, friends, and all your contacts! Let’s get a good audience for this one! Check out tickets HERE.

The poster is also available, so share that digitally too, and physical copies should be with us for next week’s rehearsal!

Todd Learning Guides

OUP have published free learning guides for the Todd! Please do use them! You can also find it on our good friend Choralia.

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Fiddle Fingers

This weekend, Bec and I are heading up to Ripon to take part in the Fiddle Fingers Musicathon. Fiddle Fingers is a youth string group set up by Bec’s mum 25 years ago, and to celebrate this occasion, we’re playing music continuously for 25 hours! They started at midday today, and will continue until 1pm tomorrow (we’ve got the nightshift while the kids sleep... yay!) This is all to raise money for 2 fantastic charities: Cancer Research UK and Ehlers-Danlos Support UK.

If you want to support this Musicathon, please consider donating via the link HERE.

Forthcoming Events

A few events to share this week. Next week I’ll be sharing a load of events in the Festival, so if you’d like to check any of them out now, they’re up on the Festival website.

It’s not too late to catch Sounds Historical and their concerts The Bird Fancyer’s Delight. There are a couple more concerts you can make it to in time. Secondly, is the next CRAG concert. And finally, there’s the Joy of Singing workshops – those who went to one similar last year said it was great!

This Week’s Listening...

Another follow on from the Theory Workshop last weekend. We spoke about pentatonic scales (worth a read, if you’re interested), and Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the universality of the scale brilliantly. It’s well worth a watch HERE.

Have a great weekend and see you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Good morning friends, I hope you’re all well and had a great weekend. We had our second Theory Workshop on Saturday (more below) which went really well. I always think there’s a moment in a term where things start to click, and last week really felt like that moment, so let’s keep up this amazing energy!

What We Did – Wednesday 14th February

• We started by refreshing the ending of the Kyrie locking in what we did on the 7th. This felt a lot more confident.
• Then we worked on the Credo, both the faster sections and the joins between them and the heavy blues sections.
• We split into sectionals to do some work on the Credo and It was a lover and his lass, firming up some of the more challenging chords.
• Then we came back together to run the Sanctus, and to put It was a lover together as full tutti.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look through the Credo, as well as work on your notes in It was a lover, and sing through the Sanctus.

• We’ll start by refreshing the themes of the Credo, in preparation for our run of the Todd next week.
• Then we’ll sing through the Sanctus and Benedictus.
• After this we’ll split into sectionals to go through the Gloria, and Hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
• Finally, we’ll come together to sing the first two movements of the Songs and Sonnets, and if time Hey, ho.

As I said last week, a lot to get through, but we’re making great progress. As all the music is so different, it’s really work reminding yourselves of the movements, and what the themes are... keep listening to the pieces!

Theory Workshops

Both workshops went really well – the 2nd was definitely more intense than the 1st as we had to cover some difficult concepts to understand our harmony and score reading a little better, but I was so pleased to have introduced this all to you, even if it’s not perfect yet – remember, people spend YEARS doing this, not just 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon. Well done all!

If you’d like to test your knowledge, you can see the booklet below (answers at the end). We’ll also be selling the remaining booklets if you’d like one – see Susannah and Mark at the rehearsal.

Marked Scores

These markings should all be in by now please!

For copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public) we’ve had to password-protect the scores. Please feel free to email me or Annabel if you’ve forgotten it and we can share it with you.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

People have mentioned they would like more help with the Todd – as I’ve shared on previous Conductor’s Notes, there are learning guides for the Todd below:

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

This Week’s listening...

Something from the theory workshop – we were talking about musical structures (forms), and the ternary form (A,B,A). Here’s the example I shared... Dvorak’s gorgeous Largo from his Symphony No. 9: The New World.

You can check it out HERE.

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Good morning everyone, I hope you’re well and have had a good start to the week. A relatively short one this week, so please do give it a read.

What We Did – Wednesday 7th February

• We started with a run through of the Kyrie, seeing how much of it we could put together. This went really well given we’ve never tried to sing a movement through from beginning to end before. Once we’d remembered how each section went it was a lot smoother. We worked on the ending (pages 16 & 17), and will refresh this this coming week.
• Then we split into sectionals to work on the Credo. Sops and Tenors started off on pages 45 & 46 with me, and then we worked on the florid rhythms and key changes.
• We worked on the Agnus Dei in sectionals, going through the opening rhythms, and learning the ‘free-flow’ style of jazz, with each line doing its own thing, all based around a few notes in the chord.
• We ended by coming back together to sing those moments in the Credo and Agnus Dei.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look through the Kyrie, reminding yourselves of the melodies, and looking at the ending. Please also go through the aforementioned sections of the Credo and Agnus Dei.

A reminder that there is definitely a rehearsal this week! It may be half term, Valentine’s Day, and Ash Wednesday, but there’s a lot of work we still need to do on the Todd, so please try to make the rehearsal!

• We’ll start by refreshing the ending of the Kyrie from last week.
• Then we’ll sing through the Sanctus, seeing what position that’s in. We’ll do some top and tailing on this.
• Then I’d like to go through as much of the Credo as possible (at a steady speed), so we can remind ourselves of the melodies in that.
• We’ll split for sectionals to firm up sections of the Credo and also to go through It was a lover and his lass.
• Finally, we’ll finish with a reminder of the first two movements of the Songs and Sonnets.

A lot to get through, but we’re making great progress. As all the music is so different, it’s really work reminding yourselves of the movements, and what the themes are... keep listening to the pieces!

Theory Workshops

There’s still time to sign up for the second theory workshop! It’ll be really interesting and I hope you’ll all take lots away from it, helping you understand the music we do! You can still get tickets to the second workshop HERE.

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
While not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by looking at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and contextual understanding. We’ll apply this to some conducting and singing in the second half.

Marked Scores

The marked scores are below. By now I expect you to all have the markings in!

For copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public) we’ve had to password-protect the scores. Please feel free to email me or Annabel if you’ve forgotten it and we can share it with you.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

I’d highly recommend listening to the works, and you can hear my recommended recordings here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer free learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

This Week’s listening...

This week, to support our learning of the styles of music we’re singing, I wanted to share something that is reminiscent of the Agnus Dei that we looked at in detail last week. Nina Simone’s I Put A Spell On You is a great example of this Blues style, and features lots of this ‘free-improvisation’ type of jazz, where all the parts flow and interact with each other uniquely – just listen to the instrumental music against what she sings.

You can check it out HERE.

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Hello friends, I hope you all had a lovely weekend and a good start to the week. Sorry I missed the Notes last week, it’s been a very busy time which is both exciting and exhausting, so I hope you can forgive the delay in getting these to you; I know how helpful people find them.

It’s a bit of a long one as there are lots of important things below – I’m very grateful to you all for taking the time to read them!

What We Did – Wednesday 24th January

• We started by refreshing the Benedictus, singing through the opening (remember Tenors to walk up the scale with the Basses just before your first entrance to help you find your first note!). We also went through the key changes, practicing feeling the ‘lift in sound’. Then we worked on the “Hosanna” section, putting in the accents and securing the notes in each part.
• Then we split into sectionals to work on the Gloria, focusing on the 5/8 section on pages 21-24. We practiced the rhythms and then got the notes sorted. This paid off as when we brought it together at the end it worked perfectly! Huge congratulations for this!
• We worked on the Sanctus in sectionals, firming up the notes, and these were on the whole much more confident when we sang it together at the end. It was good to focus on some of the harmonies and rhythms especially on pages 53 and 54.
• We ended by looking briefly at the main themes in the Kyrie, ensuring they stay fresh in our minds.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please sing through the Benedictus, and then look at the 5/8 section of the Gloria, and practice your notes in the Sanctus and Kyrie.

What We Did – Wednesday 31st January

• We began by warming up with Who is Sylvia in the Shearing, working on beautiful long lines, direction of the music, and expression of the text (as well as ensuring all notes were secure).
• Then we refreshed the 5/8 section of the Gloria, which went very well, and after some practice finding the notes we joined it into figure 23.
• After this, we refreshed our memory of the Credo theme on page 30. We did some note-bashing to ensure everyone felt happy with the pitches, and then worked on some of the fiddly rhythms, including the top of page 34. We also went through the rhythms from page 45 to the end of the Credo, and sang through. We’ll do some sectional work on this!
• We then worked on the Kyrie from page 12 through to page 16, especially looking at the transition and making sure the words lined up with the notes.
• And finally we ended with some work on verse 4 (page 22) of It Was A Lover, looking at some of the notes, and feeling the rhythms of the music together. The harmony in this piece is deceptively difficult, so don’t worry if you’ve not got it nailed down just yet!

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please sing through Who Is Sylvia, look at the Credo and Kyrie in the Mass, and go through your notes in It Was A Lover And His Lass.

• We’ll begin by singing the whole of the Kyrie, seeing how much we can do.
• After this we’ll split into sectionals to go through the Credo from page 45 – end – ATB will be with Rowena, Sopranos will be with me.
• Then we’ll do sectionals on the Agnus Dei. SA with me, TB with Rowena.
• If there’s time, we’ll do a small note-bash in sectionals on It Was A Lover.
• We’ll come back together to sing through the end of the Credo and as much of the Agnus Dei as time allows.

To prepare for this rehearsal, please go and listen to the whole of the Mass in Blue, or at the very least the movements we’ll be doing. It doesn’t take long, and you can do it with a drink in your hand!

To give you plenty of advanced warning, we’ll be running the Mass in Blue on Wednesday 28th February to see what state it’s in. This will also help us get a great feel for the whole piece, so please make sure you’re prepared for this. (Don’t worry, there are still plenty of rehearsals after to touch it all up, but this is a vital part of the rehearsal process)!

Theory Workshops

Last Saturday we had the first of the Theory Workshops, which people found incredibly useful – there was a great buzz of learning in the room, and plenty of questions were asked (and hopefully answered!) If there are any questions remaining from the session, please do come and ask!

Below is the booklet for the day with the answers to the exercises at the end, in case you wanted to check your work! It’s the same password as the marked scores. We also have some physical copies left, so if you would like one please let us know on Wednesday.

You can still get tickets to the second workshop HERE.

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
While not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by looking at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and contextual understanding. We’ll apply this to some conducting and singing in the second half.

Marked Scores

The marked scores are below. By now I hope you’ve all got the markings in – please don’t let the team down by breathing in the wrong place!!

For copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public) we’ve had to password-protect the scores. Annabel sent an email out first week with the password in the email, but I’ll keep announcing it on Wednesdays. Please also feel free to email me or Annabel if you’ve forgotten it and we can share it with you.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

I’d highly recommend listening to the works, and you can hear my recommended recordings here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer free learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Music Festival

As I shared at the start of term, we’ll be singing in the Chipping Norton Music Festival – a great opportunity to perform some of our concert works, and to participate in an amazing festival! As shared, the date is SATURDAY 9th MARCH. We don’t know what time yet as the day hasn’t been finalised, but it would be great to have as many people singing as possible, so we get a chance to perform some of the music before our concert!

Music is TBC, but we’ll likely do the Sanctus from Mass in Blue (the only movement without the Soprano Soloist), and a couple of movements from the Shearing.

Becca Wilkins

Speaking of the soprano soloist, we’ve booked a fantastic singer, Becca Wilkins, as our soloist. Bec and I were at university with her, and it’s been great watching her career take off in London, so we’re really lucky to have her with us!

You can hear her on Spotify, or on her website HERE.

Forthcoming events

There are a couple of events coming up soon, so do check them out and go and support those involved.

The first features some of our very own members. David and Gareth are fairly new members, and Rachel, who was the Soprano Section Representative last year, says:
“David, Gareth and I are currently busily involved with rehearsals for Banbury Operatic Society’s Forthcoming show Calamity Jane – 14-17 Feb 2024. Its going to be a great show!
Please take a look at the poster below and book your tickets now! You can book HERE.“

The second is a come-and-sing Messiah. All details are on the poster below.

This Week’s listening...

I often write down ideas of things that I want to share with you, and I can’t remember exactly why this is on the list, but I remember mentioning the piece to Mark, either in a rehearsal or in the pub... either way, it’s a beautiful choice this week...

Spiegel im Spiegel is arguably one of Arvo Pärt’s most famous works. Translated as ‘mirror(s) in the mirror’, this standalone piece was originally written for piano and violin in 1978, and is in the minimalist style, using regular and repeated patterns. In fact, the style of minimalism Pärt employs was created by him two years earlier; this is the tintinnabular style, wherein a melodic voice, operating over diatonic scales, and tintinnabular voice, operating within a triad on the tonic, accompany each other.

Whether you’ve had a busy start to the week or are recovering from a busy weekend, take a moment to relax, reflect, and enjoy this stunning piece of music! You can check it out HERE.

I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Hello everyone, I hope you’re well and have had a good end to week! We had a lovely time in Germany (more below, if you’re interested), but it was lovely to be back with you all.

What We Did – Wednesday 17th January

A really good rehearsal on Wednesday – we made lots of good progress, and locked in a load of music. Keep practicing at home!

• We started by refreshing the opening to the Gloria from Mass in Blue, reminding ourselves of the rhythms and some notes, before singing it with more confidence. Then we worked on pages 24-26, noting how similar the music is to the opening, and how some motifs return.
• Then we reminded ourselves of the opening of the Benedictus – tenors, remember that to find your starting note you can walk up the scale with the basses at the end of their first entry! We practiced all of the modulations, and began joining them together.
• After the break, we learnt the “Hosanna” section in the Benedictus (starting on page 61), and went all the way to the end, noting the rogue 3/4 bar at the end of page 66.
• Then we briefly refreshed the opening of the Kyrie, reminding ourselves of the opening melody and the counter-melody in the sops and altos, finishing at figure 4.
• We ended the rehearsal by working on 3. It was a lover and his lass from Songs and Sonnets, practicing the tricky intervals in the opening, then practicing the jazzier harmonies the end the verses.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please work on the Gloria and Benedictus of the Mass in Blue, especially as we’ve seen most of these movements in great detail now. Also look at It was a lover and his lass and practice some of those notes slowly.

• We’ll start by refreshing the whole of the Benedictus, locking in the “Hosanna”s.
• Then we’ll split into sectionals to work on the Gloria from figure 20-23, and the ending from figure 27.
• After the break we’ll look at the Sanctus in sectionals.
• Then we’ll come back together to put together the Gloria (figures 20 & 27), and Sanctus.
• If there’s time, we’ll end with some more work on the Kyrie.

Marked Scores

The marked scores are below. I’m so grateful to you all for taking the time to mark up your parts, it makes SUCH a difference to rehearsals!

For copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public) we’ve had to password-protect the scores. Annabel sent an email out first week with the password in the email, but I’ll keep announcing it on Wednesdays. Please also feel free to email me or Annabel if you’ve forgotten it and we can share it with you.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

I’d highly recommend listening to the works, and you can hear my recommended recordings here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer free learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Theory Workshops

The first theory workshop is almost upon us, so please do sign up for these. I’m sure for many of you they’ll be incredibly helpful!
Booklets will be provided on the day, and tea and coffee will be served during the break.
Each session individually costs £10, but as we’d love for you all to attend both sessions we’re offering both for £15, so make sure you sign up!

You can get tickets HERE.

Workshop 1
A Singer’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 27th January, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Methodist Church
This workshop will give you an introduction to music theory, including the fundamental knowledge to read the music and understand what’s on the page. In the second half we’ll apply this to simple pieces and singing exercises, using it in a choral setting.
—

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
While not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by looking at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and contextual understanding. We’ll apply this to some conducting and singing in the second half.

Germany Trip

There’s a CRAG concert in a few weeks, so do go along and support this wonderful organisation by listening to an excellent concert!

Germany Trip

In case you’re interested in what I get up to outside of conducting CNCS, I’ve just come back from a series of events in Germany with the male-voice ensemble Man(n) Singt! and my barbershop quartet The Acafellas. When we were over there, we sang a New Year’s concert to promote Man(n) Singt!’s new CD which we recorded last year with brass and harp, and then the barbershop quartet sang for a New Year’s reception, did some coaching with the lower voices in a youth choir, and sang a sold-out concert in a small church in a lovely little village called Palmach, just outside of Karlsruhe. It was such an amazing time, and photos of these events are below.

This Week’s listening...

Is based on my trip to Germany – Man(n) Singt! sang with a brass quintet called LJO-Brass, and I wanted to share something of theirs. Years ago they recorded a CD themselves, and they’ve got a couple of tracks available on their website. My favourite is the recording of Ewald’s Third Brass Quintet.

You can check it out HERE.

Have a lovely weekend everyone, and I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Good evening friends, I hope you’re all well and had a lovely week. What a pleasure it was to be back making music with you all on Wednesday, thank you all for being there. Let’s kick the year off with some Conductor’s Notes featuring some important information – thank you for reading through!

What We Did – Wednesday 10th January

• We started with Shearing: Live with me and be my love, learning the notes for the first two verses. We focussed with T/B on not losing the pitch at Letter F. Then we did a tiny bit on the final verse at Letter I, but will ensure notes are secure in sectionals – we did look at the tuning of the last chord though.
• Then we went through When daffodils begin to peer, confirming notes and beginning to put some expression and flow into the music.
• After the break we started with the opening of the Gloria from Mass in Blue, learning the opening rhythms and beginning to feel these tricky syncopations. We then worked on the notes and rhythms on page 19, before once again firming up the rhythms on page 20.
• Finally, we ended by working on the opening of the Benedictus, reminding ourselves of each individual part that builds up the texture. We then focussed on the semi-tonal key changes which crop up throughout the movement.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please work on the first two movements of Songs and Sonnets, and remind yourself of the opening of the Benedictus in the Mass. If you also have time, please go through the rhythms in the Gloria, by speaking/singing along to a recording.

In this rehearsal, we’ll:

• Start by refreshing the opening of the Gloria, and tie it into the end of the movement.
• Then refresh the Benedictus, and learn the “Hosanna” section on page 61.
• After this we’ll remind ourselves of the Kyrie.
• If there’s time, we’ll look at the Credo theme too, reminding ourselves of that from before Christmas.
• We’ll end by working on It was a lover and his lass.

Marked Scores

The marked scores are below. I’m so grateful to you all for taking the time to mark up your parts, it makes SUCH a difference to rehearsals!

For copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public) we’ve had to password-protect the scores. Annabel sent an email out last week with the password in the email, but I’ll keep announcing it on Wednesdays. Please also feel free to email me or Annabel and we can share it with you.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

I’d highly recommend listening to the works, and you can hear my recommended recordings here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer free learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Theory Workshops

As mentioned on Wednesday, please do sign up for these, I hope they’ll be incredibly helpful!
Booklets will be provided on the day, and tea and coffee will be served during the break.
Each session individually costs £10, but as we’d love for you all to attend both sessions we’re offering both for £15, so make sure you sign up!

You can get tickets HERE.

Workshop 1
A Singer’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 27th January, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Methodist Church
This workshop will give you an introduction to music theory, including the fundamental knowledge to read the music and understand what’s on the page. In the second half we’ll apply this to simple pieces and singing exercises, using it in a choral setting.
—

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
While not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by looking at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and contextual understanding. We’ll apply this to some conducting and singing in the second half.

This Week’s listening...

Something rather interesting for you all this week – a friend in the OUP Choir mentioned to me that she’d been listening to a radio programme presented by Felix Klieser, a french horn player who’s become more widely renowned following his BBC Proms debut last year. The thing that makes Felix’s playing more impressive than most is the fact he plays with his feet, owing to being born without arms.

You can watch him play Mozart’s Second Horn Concerto HERE.

And you can hear the programme he presented on BBC Sounds for the next few days HERE.

Have a lovely weekend, and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.

–Ben

Hello friends! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and are looking forward to getting cracking again on some excellent music! Here’s everything you need to know for the start of term.

And a quick reminder that you can sign up for an automatic notification of when I post Conductor’s Notes, so you don’t have to check regularly. Sign up HERE.
(I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to try and get them done by the weekend each week...!)

First rehearsal back

A reminder that we’re starting again on Wednesday 10th January in the Town Hall. We’ve already made some really good progress on the Mass in Blue, learning the motifs for each movement, and also beginning our work on Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare.

For our first rehearsal back we’ll be looking at:
– Shearing: Live with me and be my love, and When daffodils begin to peer.
– Todd: Gloria (opening-figure 20, and figure 24-end), and Benedictus (opening-figure 73)

Below is the plan for the term. All the dates have been shared, but just so you’re all fully aware of what’s going on.

Please note, our final Wednesday rehearsal of the term (Wednesday 20th March) is in SS Peter and Paul’s Church, Deddington, where the concert will be. There is NO Friday rehearsal on the 22nd March.

—

Marked Scores

The marked scores are below. Thanks for your patience with me getting these out; I wanted to meet with Karen to decide on a few performance-related things before marking them up. I’m so grateful to you all for taking the time to mark up your parts!

Due to copyright reasons (as these posts are viewable by the public), we’ve had to password-protect the scores. I’ll send an email out to all members letting you know the password, as well as announcing it on Wednesday.

Recommended recordings & learning guides

I’d highly recommend listening to the works, and you can hear my recommended recordings here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer free learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Theory Workshops

Not long until our music theory workshops. Many people have approached me in the past asking for some advice and sessions on music theory, so it would be great to see you all at these workshops.
Booklets will be provided on the day, and tea and coffee will be served during the break.
Each session individually costs £10, but as we’d love for you all to attend both sessions we’re offering both for £15, so make sure you sign up!

You can get tickets HERE.

Workshop 1
A Singer’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 27th January, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Methodist Church
This workshop will give you an introduction to music theory, including the fundamental knowledge to read the music and understand what’s on the page. In the second half we’ll apply this to simple pieces and singing exercises, using it in a choral setting.
—

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
While not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by looking at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and contextual understanding. We’ll apply this to some conducting and singing in the second half.

This Week’s listening...

... will hopefully get you in the mood for some jazz...

The Benedictus of the Mass in Blue is unashamedly based on Fever, as made famous by Peggy Lee in the late 50s. However, I want to show you Michael Bublé’s cover of it, as he’s so laid back and suave, which is just the feeling we’re aiming for in the start of the Benedictus.

Check it out HERE.
(sorry there’s an awkward cut in it... it doesn’t detract from the performance!)

See you all on Wednesday, I can’t wait to get back to making music with you all again!

–Ben

Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all well and are settling down for a relaxed Christmas and New Year. We’re off to see family tomorrow, so time for my final post of the year!

Thanks for 2023

I want to start off these Notes by thanking you for such an amazing year! As I said in my AGM report at the end of November, it’s been truly incredible what we’ve done this year; A move to the Town Hall, the ‘Breathe’ workshop, the Music Festival, Brahms’s Requiem, our fun Summer Concert, the Mozart Requiem Come-and-Sing, a summer social, a Saturday rehearsal, the incredible Remembrance concert, some Christmas carols, and finally the Christmas Come-and-Sing! What. A. Year. A massive thank you to you all for such incredible work in singing at these events and throughout the term. An even more massive thank you to my partner-in-crime Rowena, without whom we’d not stand a chance! And finally the most massive thank you to the Committee (both old and new) and volunteers for all of their hard work behind the scenes; we couldn’t do what we do without the hugely dedicated team of volunteers who work tirelessly to bring together these incredible projects.

As I come to the end of my second full year with the Choral Society, I can wholeheartedly say that is an absolute pleasure to make music with you all!

It’s been a great run of Christmas events this year. We sang for the Chipping Norton Christmas Lights Switch On on Thursday 23rd November, the Great Rollright Christmas Market on Saturday 2nd December, and had our Christmas Come-and-Sing on Sunday 17th December! Then, on my birthday, I asked some friends to come carol singing around Chipping Norton, raising money for the Cotswold Youth Choir as we prepare to launch it in the new year; we raised a brilliant £110! Here are some photos from each event!

Future Dates

Please make note of the dates for the next concert:

Rehearsals begin on Wednesday 10th January.
Theory workshops are below.
There’s NO FRIDAY rehearsal this term, due to Deddington’s availability.
Therefore, Wednesday 20th March will be in SS Peter and Paul’s Deddington.
The concert is on Sunday 24th March.

The repertoire is fab: Shearing’s Songs and Sonnets and Todd’s Mass in Blue. We’ll be joined by the Karen Sharp Quartet for this!

Dates for the rest of the year are viewable in the ‘Rehearsals’ section of the website, under the ‘Members’ tab, HERE.

Theory Workshops

We’ll be running two theory workshops in the Spring term, following feedback on what you would like to work on. They’re open to all members of the Choral Society, and will be an excellent opportunity to expand your knowledge and put into practice the fundamentals of music theory, in order to help us sing to the best of our abilities!

Workshop 1
A Singer’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 27th January, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Methodist Church
This workshop will give participants an introduction to music theory, along with the basic knowledge required to read the music. We’ll apply this to pieces and singing exercises, building confidence in sight-reading and music recognition.
—

Workshop 2
A Conductor’s Guide to Music Theory
Saturday 17th February, 2pm – 5pm
Chipping Norton Town Hall
Whilst it’s not compulsory to attend both workshops, this session will build on the first session by look at the job of a conductor, including score analysis, decision-making, and musical understanding. We’ll apply this to both conducting and singing.

Future Events

Two exciting events for you to look forward to in the new year. The first is the next CRAG concert on Sunday 7th January, which you can see in the poster below. The second is Oxford Orpheus is holding a Come-and-Sing Brahms Requiem, so check that out HERE.

Mann Singt!

Some of you will know I often sing with the German male-voice ensemble called Mann Singt!, and some of you may even remember that I went to record a CD with them back in September... well, just in time for Christmas, it’s been released!!! We’re so proud of it, so please do check it out on Spotify HERE.

I’m going to Germany in January to promote the CD, as well as to perform with my barbershop quartet the Acafellas, so if you’d like to buy a physical copy of this excellent disk, please email me directly or contact me via my website HERE and I can bring back a copy with me.

And finally...

have a lovely and restful Christmas and New Year, and I look forward to another fantastic year of music making in 2024.

–Ben

Hello all, I’m writing this in advance of our rehearsal this evening to give you an update and a reminder in case you have time to read this, but it’s still all relevant after the rehearsal, so no rush to get through it!

What We’ve Been Doing

• We’ve now looked at all of the Todd and the Shearing, learning the structure of the pieces, and some fine details.
• We’ve already put some good work into understanding the rhythms and text, and some of the harmonies, as well as learning the melodic lines.
• We’ve seen how a lot of the music in the Todd comes back from previous sections, helping us understand the music and making it slightly less intimidating to learn.

To catch up: If you’ve missed the rehearsals up to this point, please give the Shearing Songs and Sonnets and the Todd Mass In Blue a listen.

This is the last week of rehearsals before we break for Christmas. In this rehearsal we’ll cover the first two movements of the Todd and of the Shearing, refreshing what we did in those opening weeks and continuing our learning of the opening of the works.

Marked Scores & Learning Guides

As expected, this is a busy time at the moment, so I haven’t finished the marked score yet, but it will be available before Christmas. Thank you for your patience.

You can hear the pieces here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Christmas Come-and-Sing

Please do come to our Christmas Come-and-Sing this Sunday (17th December) at the Town Hall! It’ll be a lovely occasion, and great to sing some familiar favourites alongside some interesting new works. Keep sharing it among family and friends! You can get tickets HERE.

Future Events

This weekend is a good one... you can see the Cherwell Choral Society sing on Saturday 16th, getting you in the mood for our Come-and-Sing the following day!
Then, next week, Jane in the tenors has asked me to share the carols singalong at the Chequers from 8pm on Thursday 21st. They’ll supply word sheets, so all you have to do is turn up. It can get quite busy so it’s worth getting there a bit early. The Chequers will also be doing their raffle that evening. Not one to miss!

This Week’s Listening

This week’s listening is actually a documentary on Bernstein that the BBC broadcast the other day. In fact, it was an entire evening of Bernstein! We went to see the new biopic Maestro the other week, and it was fantastic – we both cried for the last 30 minutes or so... Bernstein fever is still alive! Check out the BBC stuff HERE.

Thanks all, see you later!
– Ben

Good evening friends, I hope you’re all well and had a lovely weekend.

Firstly, a huge thanks to those who sang on the Town Hall steps for the Chippy Christmas Lights Switch On. It was fantastic, we went down a treat, and you did not only the Choral Society but the town proud!

A quick update for this week, plus something for this weekend.

What We Did – Wednesday 22nd November

• We made a start on our new pieces for the Spring Term – choral jazz!
• We began the rehearsal by getting an overview of the Shearing Songs and Sonnets, briefly talking about each movement.
• Then we sang through every movement, getting a feel for the changes in style between each movement, and how the jazz style comes through.
• After this we looked at the Kyrie of the Will Todd, during which we saw a completely different type of jazz influence, talking about rhythm and extended harmony... more on this to come.

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please give the Shearing Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare a listen.

We’ll look at the first 3 movements of the Mass in Blue.

In the second half of the rehearsal we’ve got our AGM. It’s so important that you all come along to this, so please come to this rehearsal! I also can’t wait to update you with plans for the future, as things are progressing really well with the Commission and Youth Choir projects.

Marked Scores & Learning Guides

A little busy at the moment, so haven’t finished the marked score yet – I’ll be sharing this very soon, once the big concerts are out the way.

You can hear the pieces here:
SHEARING
TODD

There are a couple of places that offer learning guides for these songs. The ones I’ve found are:

Shearing

Todd – OUP
Todd – Choralia

Christmas Lights Switch On

Very excitingly, we’ve been asked to sing at the Great Rollright Christmas Market on Saturday 2nd December. The timings are 10:30am arrival for free festive drink and cake/mince pie; 11am singing; all finished by 11:30am.

I asked for a show of hands from those doing the Christmas Lights Switch On, and a few people couldn’t make it. If you’re happy with the below carols, out of 100 Carols for Choirs (PDF below too), could you let me know on Wednesday. They’ll be collecting donations for the choir, so I know we’ll put on a good show for them... please do let me know on Wednesday if you can sing. Thank you!

O Come all ye faithful (p.226)
Away in a manger (p.61)
Hark the Herald Angels sing (p.107)
O Little town of Bethlehem (p.234)
God rest you merry, gentlemen (p.83)
It came upon a midnight clear (p.194)
While shepherds watched their flocks (p.378)
In the bleak mid-winter (p.173)
Ding Dong merrily on high (p.82)

Future Events

Two events on the same weekend: First is NC3 on Saturday 9th December. Those who went to Dartington with Peter will know Edward Caswell, and of course I encourage you to go and support our members who also sing in NC3. Secondly is Papagena, who are STUNNING!! Some of you may know Sarah Tenant-Flowers who sings with the group. A great weekend of concerts!

This Week’s listening

I thought I’d share with you a piece of music that I did at the weekend. Originally a ballet, we performed the suite for 13 instruments; it’s Aaron Copland’s amazing Appalachian Spring. A truly stunning piece of music, and certainly a tricky one to perform with limited rehearsal time, I hope you enjoy it! It features the famous Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’, or as we would know it ‘The Lord of the Dance’.

Listen to it HERE.

Thanks all, see you on the 29th November.
– Ben

Blimey!!! I don’t think we’ve done a better concert since I took over from Peter, that was truly spectacular. Thank you all so much for your incredibly hard work over the term, and for really rising to the challenge of the Bernstein. A more detailed breakdown of the concert below, as well as some other important points, so thank you for reading through.

But, importantly before we crack on with the rest of the notes, we must thank Rowena! Not only has she played exceptionally hard music exceptionally well this term, (my personal highlight was when Ro played one rhythm on a drum and another on the piano) but she also sang in the performance, joining in our joyous music-making right to the end! I don’t know of many other accompanists who would do this. Thank you Rowena, we’re very lucky to have you!

Concert Feedback

As I say... wow! It really was a very special concert. I remember sitting in my old house in Birmingham over a year ago, with a glass of wine, in the arm chair, having thought how amazing this programme could be, and wondering if we could pull it off – and boy did we nail it! Let’s get the tiny things out of the way – there were one or two ‘less confident’ entries in the Bernstein and Jenkins, and a few early ‘S’ in the Sanctus, but apart from that... the performance as a whole was stellar! Everyone rose to the occasion and sang their hearts out, doing real justice to a poignant and moving programme.

I think the audience knew they were in for a treat when they jumped out their seats at the first chord in the Bernstein, with the orchestra and you guys coming in so confidently! It was full of energy, which you kept up all the way through! The First movement was filled with joy, and had a real sense of security with the rhythm – all that work paid off! The second movement was beautiful, Sops and Altos, and was terrifying (for all the right reasons), Tenors and Basses. We even got the “Yisahak”s in the right place, AND perfectly together with the orchestra! Thank you for your focus on that! Of course, we must thank Josh, our wonderful countertenor soloist, who sang exceptionally, and whose tone paired perfectly with the orchestra for this movement. Similarly, our other soloists deserve equal praise, for the last movement and the Jenkins – thank you Ben and Bethan for your fantastic singing! The last movement was wonderful, and full of warmth and heartfelt passion. Can I congratulate you for the ending, which was honestly so touching; gorgeous a capella singing, which stayed perfectly in tune... something not many choirs can do. Genuinely almost brought a tear to my eye – if only I wasn’t focussing so much!

At this point I’d like to thank the Adderbury Ensemble for joining us again and for playing so brilliantly! Chris Windass, who manages the group and fixes the players for us, had once again done the most incredible job, ensuring we can put on the best concert possible, and feel supported by players at the top of their game. I adored working with them, and I’m sure you all did too. The Barber was really stunning, and as Charles, the leader, said to me in the interval “not bad for 15 minutes rehearsal”! A member of the choir followed this up with “F***ing fabulous!!” We’re so lucky to work with the Adderbury Ensemble!

The Jenkins was an incredible performance. I told you it comes alive in the performance! I don’t think, given the piece’s repetitive nature, one moment was wasted or any note ‘dull’ – it all served it’s purpose, and that’s down to your fantastic performance of this behemoth of a piece. The tuning was perfect in the 1st movement, well done!! Eric’s timing on the recording was spot on. The Kyrie went incredibly well. Tenors and Basses, your Bloody Men was stonking! People came up to me at the end and commented on how great you sounded – how clear your diction was, how confident the entries, how blended the sound... I couldn’t agree more! Apart from the aforementioned early ‘S’s, (and a rogue “yacht” which somehow sailed into the concert...), the Sanctus was very effective, and turned the tide of the piece perfectly. Then I felt your resolution and fear in Hymn to Action, especially with your final “Lord, grant us strength to die”... shivers down the spine! The whole of the following sequence felt like something out of a dream. It ran so well, was so effective, and honestly moved me so much, along with many others in the audience. Sopranos and Tenors, your Benedictus opening was STU! NNING! So smooth, so warm. And then the place where my eyes watered; the “Hosanna in excelsis!” – my god that was utterly breathtaking! And to be able to end the concert with that well blended and tuned an a capella section... absolutely fantastic!

Comments have included “an inspirational evening”; Gill in the altos said “The Bernstein, and then the Barber brought tears to my eyes. The ovation at the end was well deserved!”; and ” I have never been so moved by any of our previous concerts as I was by this one.” If you haven’t seen, St Mary’s Church have posted about it, and the sentiment they’ve shared which I think we will all carry with us is that this concert was “one which will be remembered for a long time to come.”

I really do have the best job in the world!

Remaining Rehearsals This Term

As hopefully you’ve already seen, we’ll be continuing rehearsals this term, looking forward to our Spring concert on Sunday 24th March. The programme is Shearing’s Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, and Todd’s Mass in Blue. There are 4 rehearsals between now and our break for Christmas:

• 22nd November,
• 29th November (from 20:30 we’ll be having our AGM, which is important we all attend),
• 6th December,
• 13th December.

Following these, we’ll resume regular rehearsals on the 10th January in the new year.

Christmas Come-and-Sing Day

Now this concert’s over, it’s time to start sharing our Christmas Come-and-Sing Day! Tickets are available HERE, and do share the poster below! It’ll be a fun day of singing.

Future Events

A couple of concerts for you in the next week or so – the first is another choral-orchestral offering, from my OUP Choir and Oxford Sinfonia. The second is a CRAG concert... do please come along and support these wonderful events!

This Week’s listening

Just because he’s so wonderful, another piece by Bernstein – his Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs. Written in 1950, this piece is the epitome of his jazz writing, and I think shows some wonderful influences in his compositional style. It also contains one of my favourite markings in a score: “This repeat should be made at least three times, and as many times as seems psychologically right (that is, to an ‘exhaustion point’).” – what a visceral feeling!

In this recording, he introduces the work perfectly. Listen HERE.

See you all on Wednesday for some Jazzzzzz!
– Ben

Well, this is it! The last Conductor’s Notes before the concert! Thank you so much everyone for your hard work this term. The music isn’t easy at all, and you’ve all really put in the effort to ensure both the Bernstein and Jenkins will be a roaring success. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this term, so let’s nail it on Saturday!

What We Did – Wednesday 15th November

• We began by looking at the end of the Bernstein, working on tuning, blend, and ensuring the notes are secure. This is one of the most exposed bits of the concert, so it needs to be *PERFECT*!!
• Then we spot checked the rest of movement 3 of the Bernstein, which went very well. Do your best to bring out the text, and to shine out in those little moments of melody.
• After this we looked at the 2nd movement. Basses and Tenors, you were stunning! Sing like that in the concert and I’ll be very happy! Well done with the timing! We worked on a few notes, and syncing it all up.
• Then we worked on the first movement, looking at the opening, a few hand-over moments of the melody, and then the climax of the movement, and keeping the energy going.
• We looked at 13. Better is Peace: the entrances at Letter C, and then the rhythms at Letters F & G (especially bars 84 & 99).
• Then we spot checked the Benedictus and Agnus Dei, making sure we were keeping the line really smooth and flowing, supporting to the end of each phrase.
• Finally, we worked on Angry Flames. The chords are supposed to be disgusting, so as long as you convince me you’re singing the right note, you’ll be singing the right note!

To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please catch up with the sections listed above.

In the venue! St Mary’s Church, Banbury!
Please arrive by 7:15pm so we can get you all seated!

A final few bits to just confirm we’re happy, but we’ll then be spot-checking most movements of both pieces, getting through as much in the space before we work with the orchestra on Saturday.
The sections I know we just need to check are:

• 3. Kyrie – Letter D.
• 6. Hymn Before Action – Opening & Letter D.
• 9. Torches – Letter B.

We’ll be bringing the programmes along again, so if you didn’t get one on Wednesday, you can buy one on Friday.

Concert Details

A final reminder of those ‘little bits’ for the concert.

Our pre-concert rehearsal is on Friday 17th, in St Mary’s Banbury. Please arrive for 7pm to get seated, and we’ll end at normal time of 9:30pm. Below is the rough seating plan for the day... A massive thanks to David Salter and his team who help set out chairs at the start of each rehearsal!

On the concert day, we’ll be rehearsing from 2pm – please be ready and seated for this time. It’ll allow us to do a bit of warming up and rehearsing the acapella sections before the orchestra joins us at 2:30pm. We’ll rehearse until 5pm, and then I’ll do a bit of work with the orchestra until 5:30pm.

Back ready to go for the concert by 7:10pm, and try to give yourselves a bit of ‘warming up’ time, as the Bernstein is first!

The concert dress is all black or black-tie (Black dinner jacket and trousers, black bowtie, white shirt).

Poster and Tickets

At the time of writing this, 93 tickets sold online, but still plenty spare, and just over 24 hours to sell them!

The link to tickets is HERE.

This Week’s listening

I wanted to share with you the clip I was talking about of Bernstein conducting the Chichester Psalms – I’ve referred to bar 40 being a party, and in this recording Bernstein is embodying that joy and energy! He’s a pleasure to watch, so do check it out HERE.

Toi toi toi everyone, and see you on Friday!
– Ben