80th birthdays of Sir John Rutter and Aedan Kerney celebrated in Lancing

First half, ‘A Kerney Celebration’, directed by Aedan Kerney (musical director): Sally K Albrecht & Jay Althouse, I Am a Small Part of the World; Kerney, The Lord’s Prayer (text: Matthew’s gospel); Elgar, As Torrents in Summer (Longfellow, from King Olaf); Kerney, A Heart Made Full – Noon, Childhood the past (Clare); Elgar, Solemn Prelude in Memoriam from ‘For The Fallen’, organ solo (from The Spirit of England); Kerney, Peace At Last (Cardinal Newman); Kerney, Gaelic Blessing (trad).

Second half, directed by Mattea Leow (associate musical director) – all Rutter: Gloria, 1st movement (Latin Ordinary of the Mass); For The Beauty of the Earth; Look at the World; The Lord Bless You and Keep You (Numbers); All Things Bright and Beautiful (CF Alexander); I Will Sing with the Spirit (Corinthians); A Gaelic Blessing (W. Sharp adapted Rutter).

If only we weren’t so damned British, the audience on Saturday night would unreservedly and wholeheartedly have given him his salute in full due – with a deserving standing ovation in tribute as the concert neared its end. The opportunity caught them either simply lacking spontaneity at the golden moment, or still short of grasping the full cultural importance to Lancing, or indeed the entire greater Worthing area, of Aedan Kerney MBE.

Kerney formed The Boundstone Chorus 44 years ago, as part of Lancing’s adult education programme, to perform in this church, where he began directing music 51 years ago. Hanging above them now were two silver balloons counting 8 and 0. He’d conducted the first half himself, and just before it ended the choir had presented him with a birthday cake, and he’d blown out its budget-tight cluster of candles in one breath.

The packed audience, who’d enjoyed interval cake and drinks in the hall, had their chance, albeit slightly unexpectedly at the equivalent penultimate point in the second half. Mattea Leow suddenly stepped back off her conducting rostrum and with an outstretched arm hailed Kerney, who had been singing among the basses in the second half. She called for a special final round of applause in final tribute.

The applause was warm, strong and prolonged, but it stayed too polite. Could the choir have cued something stronger by standing up, themselves? Or did Kerney’s own natural modesty mitigate against himself? Had he been – in his own words – ‘a real composer’ like Rutter, would a standing ovation been an assumed obligation? Kerney provided his own conclusion to the moment, calling back to Leow: “One question – can I take my balloons home?”

This was a three-way birthday event, although Rutter won’t be 80 until 24 September. Worcester brought into the world not only Edward Elgar, on 2 June, whose Broadheath cottage birthplace lay only half a mile from Rushwick where a farmer had a grandson born on 16 June just off Worcester city’s London Road – not far from the site of the Elgars’ family High Street music shop. That grandson, Aedan Kerney, grew up in that active musical environment, then began teaching in 1968 at Lancing’s Boundstone School, which became Boundstone Community College (now Robert Woodard Academy), shaping the music department that was the beleaguered school’s internationally-recognised triumph.

Kerney remains a teacher, an organist, a conductor and composer with an output including cantatas and musicals, some subjects being Lancing social history and one of them, To Harvest a Dream, about inter-war years transformation, was premiered at the 1990 Brighton Festival. He has conducted children and adults in national and international venues, and similarly beyond Lancing life, he has directed Worthing Choral Society since 2009 and become Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra’s chorus master. His MBE in 2004 marked his music education contribution as did his Lifetime Achievement Teaching Award for SE England. Back down the years, our regional community has had no equivalently wide-impacting teacher of music. Or, dare one venture, of any subject?

At least 50 years his junior is Leow, his associate musical director with Boundstone Chorus. She is a livewire, ever-smiling and animated audience communicator in only her second year of teaching and her first heading music at Worthing’s St Andrew’s CofE High School. The Chorus seem to be thriving on having two directors. Here they were 60 strong (Sop22, Alt21, Ten7, Bss10), in good voice throughout and steady when unaccompanied, in the selected moderately-paced 13 songs and anthems.

Before the crowded interval, they were singing for their sympathetic father figure, in four of Kerney’s own his compositions interspersing an Elgar part song from his cantata King Olaf and an organ slow march from his late choral work The Spirit of England. Then after the break, under Leow, they luxuriated in some of their favourite Rutter, in material the ample recordings of which inevitably provide further inspiration. Some pleasing colours came forth from The Boundstone Chorus unison men and sopranos.

The texts set by the first half music, absent from the concert brochure, were each welcomely read by bass Richard Brunton, preluding its performance, with the exception of the gentle, hymn-like opening song. Soprano Elan Bacon and baritone Ian Tout soloed at the beginning of Kerney’s The Lord’s Prayer, which his Boundstone CC choir had sung in York Minster with him on their 1992 Yorkshire tour – as they did also Elgar’s As Torrents in Summer. The Chorus were secure in a cappella and unisons, and Kerney’s melodies quite often call for wordless chorus backdrops.

His A Heart Made Full, setting emotional pastoral poet John Clare, has an individual profundity and form, released forward by an appealing piano intro which flows later also toward the finish. Kerney’s then school head Stephen Love’s 1994 retirement prompted this setting of his boss’ favourite writer. Kerney revealed: “A lot of what I’ve written happened by accident,” meaning often composed for situations or requests, and reminding how often composition is not for its own sake.

His Gaelic Blessing was an emergency measure, on realising Rutter’s version the Boundstone Chamber Choir intended for a Wiston carol service was ruled out by the little church temporarily having no electricity for the piece’s essential organ accompaniment. He had 10 minutes to write it and the same for BCC to learn and run it through. In comparatively less-pressured contrast, Kerney’s Lord’s Prayer, originally in unison, was written during a school lunch-break on his 35th birthday.

The pragmatic simplicity of Kerney’s choral writing displayed little overt commerciality or popular contemporary influence. But in objective comparison, it was interesting during the swifter second half to find ‘real composer’ Rutter, after his stirring, fanfare-like Gloria, coming in with several keyboard song intros and accompaniments owing something to the Elton John school of Your Song and its subsequent material! Rutter, writing frequently to American commission, was raised on London’s Marylebone Road, probably not far along from the Royal Academy of Music, now an Elton John stronghold, where he the teenaged Reginald Dwight had gone for Saturday classes, maybe on his way passing the Rutter family’s front door.

But in music, we know simplicity can make greatness. And just like his music, Rutter’s verbal communications come across disarmingly uncluttered and expressively exact.

Richard Amey

Upcoming concerts

Saturday 21 June (7.30), Worthing Choral Society, at St George’s Church, Worthing (director Aedan Kerney, associate music director Sam Barton, keyboard Olly Parr, organ Philip White-Jones): Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s choral re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – ‘A Season to Sing’. Choral favourites Zadoc The Priest (Handel) and How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings (Brahms). Also Sam Barton’s Heaven, and Elgar’s Give Unto The Lord. Plus a song selection from St Andrew’s CofE High School Choir, directed by Mattea Leow. Tickers from www.trybooking.com/uk/DXQQ

Sunday 29 June (3pm), Angmering Chorale and Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra, at Worthing Assembly Hall. Handel, Zadok The Priest; Mozart, Symphony No 31 in D ‘Paris’; Haydn, Te Deum C; Mozart, Requiem.

Tickets from www.wtm.uk

Christ Church Lunchtime Series (Worthing, 12.30)

Tuesday 17 June, The Brighton Guitar Quartet.

Tuesday 8 July, Yoko Ono piano

Tuesday 12 August, South Downs Folk Singers

Tuesday 23 September, John Collins organ