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GUISBOROUGH CHORAL
SOCIETY
Music Director, Michael Summers
Michael is establishing himself as one of the North East’s rising
talents in Choral music. He is currently Director of Prudhoe
Gleemen Male Voice Choir as well as Guisborough Choral Society.
He has worked with National Youth Choirs of Great Britain,
Felling Male Voice Choir and Northern Spirit Singers. He has
taken numerous school choirs to the Music For Youth festival
national finals and lectures on choral conducting at Durham
University P.G.C.E. course.
As a performer Michael has
performed with such artists as Lesley Garrett, Black Dyke Mills
Brass Band and Barry Manilow!
Margaret Heaton
Margaret has been our accompanist for several years, and on
occasions directs our rehearsals when Michael is unable to be
present.
She is involved in the music at Great Ayton Parish
Church, and has a wide knowledge of singers and orchestral
players in the region, being also a contralto and a viola player.
Since retiring from school music teaching she has maintained a
successful pianoforte teaching practice.
AUTUMN CONCERT
and sung at Whitsun. It is a lively catalogue of the good activities
of the Holy Spirit.
The motet “O magnum mysterium” , which will be sung by the
Northern Spirit Singers, was written at about the same time as “Lux
Aeterna”. It is a mediaeval poem, set to music by many
composers, and intended to be used in worship at the end of
Advent.
Sir Michael Tippett
1905-1998
Sir Michael Tippett, like the artists Picasso and Klee, felt the pain
of the depression of the thirties suffered particularly by the
labouring classes and unemployed people in Europe and America,
and those oppressed by the pogroms of the Nazis in Germany. He
used negro spirituals in his cantata A Child of our Time as symbols
of all persecuted peoples, setting words in both English and
German to the music.
He was Music Director of Morley College, a college for working
class students, and lived briefly in Boosbeck, where he was greatly
moved by the sufferings of the miners and those unable to find
work. In 1932 he wrote songs for a unique performance of John
Gay’s The Beggars Opera, with the Boosbeck Male Voice Choir
and other local people. These pieces were recently revived, and
performed in Middlesbrough last year.
Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872 – 1958
Saturday 16th October
Programme to include
Benjamin Britten: St Nicholas Mass
Linden Lea, published in 1902, was the first song published by
Vaughan Williams, before he started his great work recovering
English folk songs
Lux Aeterna
PROGRAMME
Introitus from the Requiem Mass
Grant them eternal rest, Lord, and let perpetual light shine on
them.
A Child of our Time
Choir and Soloists
In te, Domine, Speravi from the Te Deum
The spirituals we sing are these:-
Thou didst overcome the sting of death and opened to all believers
the kingdom of heaven. To the righteous a light has risen in the
darkness.
In thee, Lord, have I hoped; let me never be confounded
Steal Away to Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I see
O nata lux
Go down, Moses
By and by, I’m gonna lay down my heavy load
Deep river, my home is over Jordan
Jesus, born light of light, redeemer of the world, accept praises and
prayers from your supplicants.
Allow us to become members of your holy body.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus
Songs by the Northern Spirit Singers
Alleluia
William Byrd
O Magnum Mysterium
Morten Lauridsen
With a Lily in Your Hand
Eric Whitacre
Armottoman Osa (The unloved orphan)
Mia Makaroff
Linden Lea
Vaughan Williams
A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
Sherwin arr Michael Neaum
INTERVAL
Refreshments provide by Guisborough Christian Aid
Come, Holy Spirit, and send from heaven your ray of light.
Come, father of the poor, giver of gifts, light of hearts, sweet guest
of the soul;
in labour, thou art rest, in heat, temperance, in grief, consolation.
In the absence of thy spirit there is nothing harmless in man
O light most blessed, cleanse what is dirty, moisten what is dry,
heal the hurt, flex the rigid, warm the frigid, correct what goes
astray.
Grant to thy faithful thy sevenfold gifts, the reward of virtue, joy
everlasting.
Agnus Dei from the Requiem Mass
Lamb of God, give them rest for ever; and may eternal light shine
on them with your saints for ever. Alleluia , Amen.
MUSIC OF OUR TIME
GUEST PERFORMERS
Some of us are old enough to have lived through most of the times
when music has been made available to everyone, through the
media of radio and records. Contemporary music includes jazz and
opera, pop and oratorio, singers and instrumentalists. It addresses
the most important needs of our human condition,, for dignity and
affection, present day and everlasting bliss.
Northern Spirit Singers
Tonight’s programme includes pieces specially written for
Yorkshire Ironstone miners and American Choral singers, English
and Finnish peoples. Almost everything has been written in our
lifetimes.
Founded in 2000 by a group of friends in the National Youth Choir,
Northern Spirit Singers have established themselves as one of the
North’s leading choirs.
They have won prizes in Choir Competitions and Music Festivals,
took part in the opening of The Sage,Gateshead, and joined Lesley
Garrett on three national tours. They have performed a series of
concerts in Durham Cathedral, and recorded three CDs. They have
been “Choir of the Day” at regional BBC choral competitions.
Some of their members have sung unannounced alongside us in
recent concerts, but this evening they sing with us in the Choral
pieces and will also perform as a Chorale in their own right.
Morten Lauridsen,
Born 1943
Morten Lauridsen is an American composer who delights in poetry
– in many languages – and the composition of choral music and
songs.
He was the Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master
Chorale from 1994-2001 when he composed Lux Aeterna. Philip
Greenfield calls him “ the composer of the most luminous, moving
choral music currently working its way into the repertoire”. His
musical background comes from Monteverdi, and Jazz.
The words in Lux Aeterna come from the Latin of the Requiem
Mass and two motets : O Nata Lux is an anonymous 10th Century
hymn set for the Feast of the Transfiguration. Veni Sancte Spiritus,
the so-called Golden Sequence, is attributed to Pope Innocent III or
the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton in the 13th Century,
Andrew Christer
Andrew is Director of Music and an organist at St John’s Church,
Darlington. He is accompanist for the Cleveland Philharmonic
Choir and the North Yorkshire Chorus, and has been a guest
organist at St Paul’s Cathedral. He played for us at our 40th
Anniversary Concert, and like us was a guest at the BBC Tees
Christmas Concert in Coulby Newham last December.
CHRISTMAS CONCERT
Saturday 11th December