Shrewsbury Cantata Choir’s proposed activities in 2021 and 2022
Week Beginning 29 March
Lockdown in the UK begins to ease. Six people can meet outside.
This gives us the opportunity to hold Garden Rehearsals (GR) again.
Let's hope April and May are kind months weather-wise.
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In 2020, when Covid restrictions permitted, up to 30 members were meeting in different groups of six in members' gardens, rehearsing with the aid of rehearsal tracks and YouTube performances. Dates and times varied to suit the hosts and singers.
WB 17 May
30 people can meet outside. We are therefore holding some Big Garden Rehearsals (BGR). These were very successful in 2020 when BGRs were kindly hosted by two of our members who have beautiful huge gardens and lots of parking.
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Our target in these difficult times is 7 weeks of six person GRs and 5 weeks of thirty person BGRs being held. A total of 12 rehearsals involving at least half of our regular members, and we could involve more people depending on the number of venues set up.
WB 21 June
'The government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.' YEH!
Now we can begin rehearsals in earnest, indoors with a full choir.
These will be held at Holy Trinity Church, Meole Brace, as our normal venue (URC, Coleham Head) will not yet be available to us at that time.
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Our target is to perform a concert on Saturday 17th July 2021.
This will be held in the wonderful St Alkmunds Church, in the heart of Shrewsbury.
This means we have four weeks of full rehearsals to build upon and bring together what has been happening in gardens all around Shrewsbury and the surrounding towns and villages.
George Frideric Handel: Dixit Dominus
From our chairman: "something uplifting would be appropriate".
Dixit Dominus was previously performed by Cantata in Spring 2014 and Spring 1996.
Also:
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit pour Noël
Yes we know it isn't Christmas but it is a celebration - our first concert since Covid 19 reared its ugly head.
This is the work that we mainly rehearsed during lockdown in 2020, and we made a closed recorded performance of it at St Mar's Church, Shrewsbury in October 2020, not long before second lockdown.
Saturday 6th November 2021
Venue to be confirmed
Mozart's Requiem and Coronation Mass (Mass in C Major).
This is the concert that we intended to perform on 21st March 2020, which turned out to be the first week of lockdown.
For the background to that, an interview with Radio Shropshire's Mark Elliott and our publicity officer Bob Fowke (bass), and links to rehearsal files:
Saturday 11th December 2021
A Christmas concert with carols and christmas music.
2022
Saturday 20th March 2022
A Passiontide flavour:
Tenebrae Responsories, Tomás Luis de Victoria - a set of eighteen motets for four voices a cappella.
Other Renaissance pieces.
Saturday 18th June 2022
The Peacemakers, Karl Jenkins - Featuring texts from some of the greatest peacemakers throughout history, including Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Anne Frank and Mother Teresa, as well as words from the Bible and the Qur an with some new text specially written by Terry Waite.
November 2022
Carmina Burana is a cantata composed in 1935 and 1936 by Carl Orff, based on 24 poems from the medieval collection Carmina Burana.
