Spring 2015
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The Spring concert took place at St John's Church in Wakefield and included a very mixed programme of sacred and secular music. The sacred pieces were; the Missa Brevis in B flat by Mozart and the splendid Purcell verse anthem "O sing unto the Lord" which was written in 1688. The Purcell work shows him at his most Italianate, with vigorous antiphony between voices and organ as well as between a prominent solo bass and the chorus.
We also performed the Five Negro Spirituals from A Child of Our Time, an oratorio with an anti-war message composed by Michael Tippett. After his release from imprisonment for his pacifist beliefs the oratorio was given its first performance in March 1944 at the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand in London. The five spirituals are for unaccompanied chorus with as many as eleven separate parts in one of the pieces. We also sang an arrangement of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" arranged by Dale Adelmann for St. John's College, Cambridge, and further contrast was provided by a performance of three sparkling choral arrangements of popular songs from the Great American Songbook - Jerome Kern's "Smoke gets in your eyes", Cole Porter's "Let's do it" and "In the mood" by Joe Garland.
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