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E-mail: ece@paulspicer.com
Website: https://englishchoralexperience.co.uk

NEWSLETTER No.20

Dear Friends

I am writing to wish you all a happy summer and just in advance of our Abbey Dore week in Herefordshire which is coming up at the end of next week. I am thrilled to be restarting this course which I had decided to stop a couple of years ago, but which I found I missed so much I wanted to get back to it! We have a goodly number of singers coming and are looking forward to a very happy week in that beautiful place where these courses all started back in 2007.

I want to draw your attention to the weekend at St Bartholomew’s, Orford on 19 and 20 September. Having decided to return to a SATB course for the first time in many years, we are currently very short of second altos, first tenors and both bass parts. I really would urge you to consider joining us for this weekend in this lovely place. The church, with its Britten connections, has a wonderful acoustic and is very spacious, the location very close to the sea is ideal, and Orford itself is a delight. It is, of course, very close to Aldeburgh (where I always choose to stay). Do please consider joining us, and pass the word on to others who might also be interested but who perhaps have not been on an ECE course before.

A fascinating building with its ruined east end which would have made it a huge building in its original state!

In October (17/18) we go to St. Cross in Winchester for our annual visit to this extraordinary medieval almshouse with its cathedral-like chapel. Numbers for this weekend are quite strong but, as always, we really need more tenors and basses to make a balanced choir as the whole programme is double choir (two Bach motets and a fabulous partsong by Stanford together with the beautiful Holst Nunc Dimittis). Please consider joining us for this. Winchester is usually pretty high-standard and we don’t want to be let down by insufficient numbers in any part. Again, please encourage any people you may know who haven’t joined us before.

What a place this is!! No wonder we return every year! Do come.

I don’t know if people may be interested or not, but my new book on Choral Conducting ‘The Generosity of Gesture’ is now out and I am getting good feedback. If anyone is interested in reading it, it is available via Amazon, or the usual places as well as the publishers, Crowood Press.

I hope very much to seeing you on one or more of these courses and send very best wishes for a lovely summer.

With all good wishes