Parkside, Burnthill Lane, Rugeley, Staffordshire WS15 2HX
Mob: +44(0)7866 770360
E-mail: ece@paulspicer.com
Website: https://englishchoralexperience.co.uk
NEWSLETTER No.13
Dear Friends
I am writing with an update on our choral activities especially in the hope that it might remind you to look again at what is coming up and hopefully to come and join us!
When the Coronation was announced for what was to be our Winchester weekend in May I sent round to ask who would prefer to be able to stay to watch the ceremony and as many said they would like to I decided to move the weekend to October 28/29. This left us with something of a hole at the May time of year and I thought it might be an interesting change to offer a single day working on Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis Pacem. This wonderful work is an impassioned plea for peace which I felt would be a welcome opportunity for everyone to come to express solidarity with our Ukrainian friends as they continue to suffer at the hands of Putin.
Please do consider coming to join us for this event. You can book up either on the ECE website or through TryBooking.com (https://www.trybooking.co.uk/CFMZ). We are using the wonderful space at the Coton Centre, Tamworth which is nicely central in the country, has a nearby railway station and plenty of parking on site. It would be really good to have a large crowd of singers for this great work. I am sure it will be a wonderful day’s singing. Scores are available for hire on the day.
We are really looking forward to our French week near Montpellier after Easter. Next year’s dates will be 3-10 April (early Easter next year) if you want to put them in your diaries if interested. Full details will be published before long.
Abbey Dore comes up in July, of course, between 16 and 22 (23 for Consort singers). I hope we will have as good a take up as we did last year when we had a particularly happy course. We will be very pleased to welcome Thomas Mottershead back as an assistant conductor (he has moved on now from being a student!). He was very popular last year and enjoyed himself, so I thought it would be good to ask him to return. We will also welcome Philip Lancaster back after a long break to be a soloist in both the Dyson and Stanford works. Philip has been involved with these courses since we started them and has been a regular visitor. It will be good to have him back this year.
Regular members of the course will be saddened to learn of the unexpected death, whilst undergoing an operation, of Hazel Prowse, one of the Churchwardens of the Abbey. She is here in the photo on the left holding the banner at the Sunday Eucharist with our Consort all around her.
She was a wonderful person and was such an enthusiastic supporter of our singing weeks, helping out in many ways over all the years we have been going there (since 2007). She will be very much missed. I hope to be able to go her funeral when the date is announced along with one or two others.
This year really will be Mary Powell’s final year with us as our fantastic caterer. This will be quite a moment for us and I hope everyone will feel able to give her a great send-off after all the years she has produced wonderful meals for us.
Do please sign up to come to Abbey Dore if you haven’t already done so. I know quite a lot of you book up your accommodation as you leave the previous July and then leave booking the course until later, but it leaves me feeling nervous as to whether we have a balanced choir and the requisite numbers!
In September we have our annual happy visit to Orford in Suffolk for the upper voices Camerata weekend on the 16th and 17th. St Bartholomew’s is a wonderful church to sing in and a great open space, and of course was the location for the premiere of several of Britten’s works including Noye’s Fludde. Booking for this will open soon once I have finalised repertoire which is nearly complete.
Winchester follows that, as I have said, on 28/29 October. We seriously need second tenors for this weekend. The beautiful Monteverdi Mass we are singing has two tenor parts and we only have three first tenors at the moment. Please do think of joining us and of asking singers in your choirs or who you know to join up.
Looking further ahead, we will be going up to the extraordinary Pearson church of St. George at Cullercoats just north of Newcastle upon Tyne from Friday 10-Sunday 12 May 2024. Do put those dates in your dairies. As always, you will be notified when booking for any course is open.
There is no stronger advertising than word of mouth from personal experience. I would be very grateful for any posts on social media saying how much you have enjoyed the courses you have attended (if you have!). We need to keep trying to find new singers and bring new people into our family of ECE course members. I would be hugely grateful if you felt able to advertise an upcoming course – particularly the Vaughan Williams day in May, Abbey Dore and Winchester tenors!
With warmest good wishes to you all
