Author: Louisa Denby

2018/19 New Year in St Davids

In December 2018 we returned to Pembrokeshire to sing services in St Davids Cathedral and to give a special New Year’s Eve concert in our beloved Trefin Chapel. It was a truly magical time and we are hugely grateful to everyone who packed out both the cathedral and the concert.

View from the organ loft.
The gents hard at work relaxing…
After the concert in Trefin Chapel.
Evensong.

2018 August | Madrigals @ Hurstbourne Priors

Sunday 5th August 2018, 3pm
St Andrew’s Church, Hurstbourne Priors, near Winchester

By popular request we returned to the delightful village of Hurstbourne Priors, in Hampshire, for a tea-time concert, this time featuring a set of madrigals from the richest repertoire of 16th-century England. It was lovely to have the church so full and to see so many familiar faces in the audience.

2018 February | Baroque by Candlelight

Saturday 10th February 2018, 7.30pm
St Peter’s Church, Petersfield

Purcell  Motets
Handel  Organ Concerto Op. 4 No. 1 in G minor
Chilcott  My Prayer
Handel  Dixit Dominus

Vox Cantab
Southern Pro Musica

Conductor  Jonathan Willcocks
Organ  Luke Fitzgerald
Soloists  Carys Brown, Louisa Dawes, David Lewis

It was an absolute joy to perform such great music in the wonderful candle-lit setting of St Peter’s Church, where we have sung so many times before. Fortunately the weather didn’t discourage our sell-out audience, and the whole atmosphere made for a very special evening indeed.

2018 January | Fitzwilliam Museum

Sunday 28th January 2018, 1.15pm
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Vox Cantab made their annual pilgrimage to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, for a lunchtime concert among the museum’s treasures.

Team Music Hall

The programme this year featured music inspired by the history of the gallery in which we performed – secular music charting the history and development of Music Hall, including works by Cornysh and Pearsall, Sullivan and Barnby, and solo songs by Glover-Kind, Edgar & Wright, and Clarke & Warren. Members of the audience were warmly encouraged to join in at appropriate moments, which they did with enthusiasm, including the clock!

Director & Piano  Louisa Denby
Soloists  Julia Kemp, Thomas Athorne, and Chris Ainsworth-Patrick

September 2017 | A Harvest Meditation

Friday 15th September, 8pm
St Peter’s, Barton, nr. Cambridge

‘A Harvest Meditation’

We were very pleased to have the opportunity to sing once more at St Peter’s. The programme was a lovely mix of the sacred and the secular – music by Elgar and Rutter, and readings from works by Ted Hughes, Laurie Lee, and John Betjeman. With thanks to the vicar and congregation for hosting us.

August 2017 | Tour to St Davids

We made our biennial trip to St Davids in Pembrokeshire in August 2017, where once again we sang services and concerts in the Cathedral and surrounding area. With a programme entitled ‘Music on Themes of Love and Devotion,’ we performed pieces by 20th- and 21st-century composers including Gjeilo, Walton, Poulenc, and MacMillan. We were very pleased to be able to contribute once more to the restoration of Trefin Chapel, with a service of Compline and a Family Concert (including audience participation, animal noises, and a conductor clad in a chicken hat). We also enjoyed time on various beaches, and singing services in St Davids Cathedral.

Relaxing on the beach…

In rehearsal in St Davids Cathedral.

 

 

2017 July & August | ‘Choral Classics’

Monday 31st July 2017
8pm, Pembroke College Chapel, Cambridge

Tuesday 1st August 2017
8pm, St Mark’s Church, Newnham, Cambridge

Once again we were delighted to perform some well-known choral classics in two of our favourite Cambridge venues. The programmes included works by renaissance composers G. P. da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus, and Thomas Morley, later works by C. V. Stanford and William Harris, and some 20th-century and contemporary pieces by composers such as Ola Gjeilo, Michael Tippett, and Cole Porter. Thank you very much to all those who packed out the two venues!

April 2017 | Cambridgeshire/London Tour

April Tour 2017

Old Royal Naval Chapel, Greenwich

We had a lovely few days away at the end of March/beginning of April 2017, singing at the Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridge, and giving concerts and singing Evensong in churches in Cambridgeshire villages and St Stephen’s, Rochester Row, London. We were delighted to be joined by our very own Oliver Hancock, who directed the Sunday Sung Eucharist at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel in Greenwich.

The concert programmes consisted of music and readings on themes of Transport and Travel; repertoire ranged from Guerrero and Gibbons through to John Rutter’s Heavenly Aeroplane and Mac Huff’s brilliant arrangement of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, accompanied by Louisa Denby.

St Stephen’s, Rochester Row

Andrew Watts and Charlotte Denby read extracts from the Bible and fictional works such as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, David Copperfield, and I am David, as well as poetry by John Heath-Stubbs and Pablo Neruda.

It was very pleasant to receive this excellent review of our Hildersham concert: http://johnbald.typepad.com/language/interludes/

 

 

March 2017 | Petersfield Musical Festival

Edward Thomas 1878 – 1917 | A Centenary Concert

We were honoured to participate in this concert as part of the 2017 Petersfield Musical Festival. The programme featured settings of the work of celebrated local poet Edward Thomas, and we were joined for some of the programme by musicians from Bedales School and a fabulous line-up of soloists.

Friday 17th March 2017
7.30pm, Petersfield Festival Hall, Petersfield, Hampshire

Vox Cantab

Bedales Cecilia Consort

Richard Pearce & Helen Cawthorne  Accompanists
Frances Kelly  Harp
Judith Treggor  Flute

John Barker, John Lofthouse, Thomas Athorne, Catherine White  Vocal soloists
Piers Burton-Page  Reader

Jonathan Willcocks & Nicholas Gleed  Conductors

January 2017 | Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands

Sunday 29th January 2017
1.15pm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

We made our annual visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on Sun 29 Jan, this time for a programme of German-related music, featuring Elgar’s Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, and motets by Brahms and Mendelssohn. It was a pleasure as always to perform in this fabulous venue.

Louisa Denby  Director
Toby Hession  Piano

Vox Cantab with Toby Hession, piano