Portsmouth Baroque Choir are back at the Festival of Chichester

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Portsmouth Baroque Choir return to the Festival of Chichester with a summer concert entitled Times and Seasons at Christ Church, Old Market Avenue, PO19 1SW on Saturday, July 6 at 7pm.

The concert will feature Jonathan Dove’s cantata The Passing of the Year, John Rutter’s Five Childhood Lyrics and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. A selection of madrigals and part songs complete the programme. Tickets are £14, concessions £12 available from the Festival of Chichester box office.

Ann Hudson, a choir member who lives in Chichester, said “Our Times and Seasons theme includes lots of music with a summery feel. This is in contrast with our recent appearances at the Festival when we've joined forces with the Consort of Twelve to perform big choral works – Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt and Bach's Mass in B minor. These represent our core Baroque repertoire as the choir's name suggests but we enjoy branching out into earlier and later periods, as for this summer's concert. This time we will be accompanied on the piano by Peter Rhodes, who will be joined in Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music by Deborah Gatland (violin) and Elias Simojoki (trumpet).

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“Unusually for us, we are performing a work which we have already performed twice in recent years, in 2018 and 2109: Jonathan Dove's song cycle The Passing of the Year. Written for double choir and containing some sections which are very challenging to sing, we are enjoying rehearsing it again; and because we have had a considerable turnover of choir members since Covid, it is new to a good number of the choir. We are also working hard on John Rutter's Five Childhood Lyrics, an early work of his, dating from 1973. His complex settings of children's verses are great fun and should be a crowd-pleaser.”

Portsmouth Baroque Choir (contributed pic)Portsmouth Baroque Choir (contributed pic)
Portsmouth Baroque Choir (contributed pic)

It will be the choir's fourth appearance for the Festival of Chichester: “The festival is a good opportunity for us. The audiences are good because everybody knows about the Festival of Chichester and it's really nice coming to Chichester where I actually live anyway. We're quite far-flung as a choir from Emsworth to Fareham but basically in Portsmouth.

“We have never performed in Christ Church before. In the past we have been at St Paul’s which is a bigger venue. We love Chichester and the choir loves coming here. Portsmouth is quite difficult to get people to come along and quite a lot of the churches have had problems with their heating systems. We have sung recently in Havant and Fareham and did very well there. Perhaps with the smaller venues people are more willing to come out. We do get around quite a bit and we do four concerts a year.

“I have been a member for 12 years. I knew (musical director) Malcolm Keeler from singing in another choir and when we were looking for another choir to join I thought that would be great. He is very patient and doesn't get cross with us! Rehearsals are always enjoyable.”

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