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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 Tour 2017
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.
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/
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
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