A Saturday evening performance at St.Mary’s Church, Claremont Gardens, Whitley Bay, NE26 3SF, conducted by David Murray, starting at 7.30 p.m.

This concert will feature Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Serenade to Music, both by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with a selection of other Christmas music.

Come and enjoy an evening filled with a fine mixture of traditional and contemporary choral music, which will fill you with the spirit of Christmas.

Details and tickets available from their website www.stmarysmonkseaton.org.uk/concertseries.

A Saturday evening concert, in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

This concert will be the first in our 75th Anniversary season and will feature Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Serenade to Music, both by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with special guests and a range of musical surprises.

Soloist – Anna Dias

Tickets – £15.00 for Nave (£8.00 concessions for full-time students and on income related benefits) or Gallery (limited view) £8.00. Accompanied under 16s free. Tickets will be available from members of the Society, at the door, or on-line from www.wegottickets.com/BCS – who also have a direct link on the home page of this website.

Doors open from 6.45 p.m. Apart from seats marked for Patrons, there are no allocated seats.

A Saturday evening concert in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

Edward Elgar’s ‘The Music Makers‘ and ‘Sea Pictures’ with Hubert Parry’s ‘I was glad‘ and ‘Blest Pair of Sirens‘.

A Saturday evening concert in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

Content to be confirmed.

This would normally outline the proposed programme of concerts for the coming years but, as you will understand, all of our planning has been disrupted by the pandemic. We are only just being able to plan the details of concerts and will update details as soon as possible. All dates are 7.30 p.m. on Saturdays in Sunderland Minster, unless otherwise noted.

December 9th 2023 – This concert will be the first in our 75th Anniversary Season and will feature Fantasia on Christmas Carols and Serenade to Music, both by Ralph Vaughan Williams, together with a selection of Christmas music.

March 16th 2024 – Edward Elgar’s ‘The Music Makers‘ and ‘Sea Pictures’ with Hubert Parry’s ‘I was glad‘ and ‘Blest Pair of Sirens‘.

June 15th 2024 – Arrangements by David Murray, our Musical Director, of more modern artistes such as the Carpenters.

The following is the proposed programme of concerts over the coming years. Actual content may be subject to change or additions and all concerts will be advertised as individual items in due course. All dates are 7.30 p.m. on Saturdays in Sunderland Minster unless otherwise noted.

April 4th 2020

St. John Passion – Bach.

June 20th 2020

Requiem – Brahms

December 5th 2020

Messiah – Handel.

March 27th 2021

Petite Messe Solennelle – Rossini.

June 19th 2021

Requiem & Cantique de Jean Racine – Faure, Panis Angelicus – Franck.

December 4th 2021

Content to be confirmed.

In a new venture for the Society, a Sunday evening concert in The Fire Station, starting at 7.30 p.m. and under the direction of David Murray.

Tickets £20.00, with online ticketing via the Fire Station website or at their box office, which is open Wednesdays to Saturdays – phone lines 2 pm to 6 pm, counter 4 pm to 6 pm. Ticket Office will also be open for in person sales when there is a performance from 6 pm.

This concert is a revue showcasing the music and lyrics of the undoubted giant of American Musical Theatre, Stephen Sondheim. It celebrates the large body of work he had produced from the outset of his career, when he was a lyricist for Jule Styne’s show ‘Gypsy’, and more famously Leonard Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’.

He had also had a whole raft of shows in his own name – some of them are remembered – for example ‘A Little Night Music’, ‘Follies’, ‘A Funny thing happened on the way to the forum’ and ‘Company’. Some of them are not, but the songs live on in their own right as little masterpieces.

Astonishingly this revue, created in the mid 1970’s, was written before the emergence of his greatest works, in the form of ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Into the Woods’, so we’ve added more material to bring things up to date, and we’ve also rewritten the libretto which connects all the songs together.

So why wasn’t his rise to the top of musical theatre more meteoric? Its easy to look back in hindsight and say this, but its clear now that his words were often too clever, too subtle, for the audiences steeped in a tradition of Rogers and Hammerstein etc, and his subjects were so often based around his own very cynical view of the success of human relationships. So people didn’t fall in love and live happily ever after.  His treatment of this dim view of humankind can be both incredibly funny and incredibly sad as the context of the song changes within the drama.

The songs you hear will make you laugh and make you cry – they are about life. They are often provocative, racy, slightly outrageous. And to return to why his success wasn’t immediate, the shows were simply playing in the wrong theatres to the wrong audiences. Its no surprise that now much of his work finds itself in opera houses where the complexity of his music can be taken on board more easily not only by opera companies but also by their audiences.

The ‘cast’ consists of four singers,(who also introduce the songs and put them in their context) as well as delivering some very funny anecdotes) two pianists, and  Bishopwearmouth Choral Society .

Come, sit back and enjoy.

A Saturday evening concert in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

Featuring a special guest performance by Bradley Creswick of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto

and Haydn Nelson Mass (No.11 in D Minor) and Te Deum (in C Major).

Soloists: Laurie Ashworth – soprano, Clare McCaldin – mezzo-soprano, Nick Smith – tenor, Patrick Owston – bass

Tickets – £14.00 for Nave (£8 concessions for full-time students and on income related benefits) or £8.00 (Gallery – limited view). Accompanied under 16s free. Tickets will be available from members of the Society, at the door, or on-line from www.wegottickets.com/BCS – who also have a direct link on the home page of this website.

Doors open from 6.45 p.m. Apart from seats marked for Patrons there are no allocated seats.

Bradley Creswick has been described as “an outstanding, internationally renowned, musician and leader of the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra who has endeared himself to audiences at the Sage Gateshead for the quality of his playing and his sheer enjoyment of the role.”

Now retired from RNS, he was appointed Leader Emeritus and more recently an MBE for services to music. Playing with friends remains a vibrant part of his life and he continues to give recitals across the UK. The Society is delighted that he can join us to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, one of the best known violin concertos.

The Missa in angustiis (Mass for troubled times) or Nelson Mass, is one of fourteen masses  written by Joseph Haydn. It is one of the six masses written near the end of his life which are, together, now seen as a culmination of Haydn’s liturgical composition. Haydn’s original title may also have come from illness and exhaustion at this time, which followed his supervision of the first performances of The Creation, completed a few months earlier. Though Haydn’s reputation was at its peak in 1798, when he wrote this mass, his world was in turmoil. Napoleon had won four major battles with Austria in less than a year. The previous year, in early 1797, his armies had crossed the Alps and threatened Vienna itself. In May 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt to destroy Britain’s trade routes to the East.

The summer of 1798 was therefore a terrifying time for Austria, and when Haydn finished this mass, his own title, in the catalogue of his works, was Missa in angustiis (Mass for troubled times). What Haydn did not know when he wrote the mass, but what he and his audience heard, was that on 1 August, Napoleon had been dealt a stunning defeat in the Battle of the Nile by British forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. Because of this coincidence, the mass gradually acquired the nickname Lord Nelson Mass.

The Te Deum is a magnificent choral drama in three parts was a commission from Empress Marie Therese, the wife of Franz I of Austria. Haydn was a frequent visitor to the imperial palace in Vienna. The Empress had a good voice; Haydn once accompanied her on a private performance of the soprano part of The Creation. The Empress repeatedly used to ask Haydn for some specially-composed church music, but Prince Esterhazy was reluctant to allow his famous employee to write for anyone but himself.

Evidently, however, Marie Therese finally got her way – we know not how! The Te Deum was composed around 1799, but its first recorded performance was not until 1800 at Eisenstadt, the home of the Esterhazy family, to celebrate Lord Nelson’s (and, inevitably, Lady Hamilton’s) arrival there.

The Te Deum is a choral work throughout, without the solo sections that are heard in Haydn’s masses and other sacred works. Two lengthy Allegro passages surround a central Adagio, effectively making the work a concerto for chorus and orchestra.

A Saturday evening concert in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

Soloist : Anna Dias.

Come and enjoy an evening filled with a fine mixture of traditional and contemporary choral music which will fill you with the spirit of Christmas. The content ranges from Holst to Todd, Chilcott and Rutter festive favourites, and a Christmas Medley by David Murray.

Tickets – £14.00 for Nave (£8 concessions for full-time students and on income related benefits) or £8.00 (Gallery – limited view). Accompanied under 16s free. Tickets are available from members of the Society, at the door, or on-line from www.wegottickets.com/event/560106 – who also have a direct link on the home page of this website.

Doors open from 6.45 p.m. Apart from seats marked for Patrons there are no allocated seats.

A Saturday evening concert in Sunderland Minster, starting at 7.30 p.m., conducted by David Murray.

Tickets remain at their pre-Covid prices and can be obtained via any member of the choir or by making a request using the Contact Us page of this website.

On this occasion we are not using the WeGotTickets option to offer tickets, so please ignore the ‘Booking Tickets’ page and any reference and link to WeGotTickets on the ‘Contact Us’ page.

In the Nave £14.00, £8.00 (students & income related benefits), accompanied Under 16s free (but they do need a ticket to ensure a seat), and £8.00 in the Gallery (with restricted view).

Soloists : Laurie Ashworth – soprano, Clare McCaldin – mezzosoprano, Richard Pinkstone – tenor,

Patrick Owston – bass.

Gioachino Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle (Little solemn mass) was written in 1863, possibly at the request of Count Alexis Pillet-Will for his wife Louise to whom it is dedicated. The composer, who had retired from composing operas more than 30 years before, described it as “the last of my péchés de vieillesse” (sins of old age).

The extended work is a missa solemnis, but Rossini labeled it, not without irony, petite (little). He scored it originally for twelve singers, four of them soloists, two pianos and harmonium. The mass was first performed on 14 March 1864 at the couple’s new home in Paris. Rossini later produced an orchestral version, including an additional movement, a setting of the hymn “O salutaris hostia” as a soprano aria. This version of the mass was not performed during his lifetime because he could not obtain permission to perform it with female singers in a church. It was first performed three months after his death, at the Salle Ventadour in Paris by the company of the Théâtre-Italien on 24 February 1869.

The unusual scoring for voices, two pianos and harmonium is in the Neapolitan harpsichord tradition of the 18th century. Rossini specified, on the second page of his manuscript, twelve singers in all, noting on the title page: “Twelve singers of three sexes, men, women and castrati will suffice for its execution: that is, eight for the choir, four soloists, in all twelve cherubim”.