A MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION
Traditional and Contemporary Choral works
from Handel to Hagenberg, Boulanger to Beach including ‘Zadok the Priest’ and ‘I was Glad’.
Saturday 24th June at 19.30 in Trinity Church Gosforth
Soprano: Mary Hitch
Soprano: Katie Oswell
Piano: Nick Butters
Organ: Kris Thomsett
Musical Director: Mark Anyan
£12 with free programme Free to under 18s with a paying adult
(£6 for those in full time education or registered unemployed)
Available online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newcastle-choral-society
Card payments or cash on the door
There will be a Pay bar in the interval – CASH ONLY please
Our midsummer concert consists of a wide variety of music drawn from different periods. Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Handel, Mozart, Fauré and Parry are included as well as Ola Gjeilo
Morten Lauridsen is currently one of America’s most performed composers,
whose Sure on this Shining Night provides us with the title for our programme.
We are also pleased to perform a number of works by female composers. Music written by women has often been unjustly neglected in the past but is now being given the attention it fully merits. Amy Beach, Lili Boulanger and Elaine Hagenberg provide a substantial contribution to our programme.
In addition to the United Kingdom we visit the USA, France, Italy, and Norway.
Quiet, contemplative music and rousing, joyful choruses provide great contrast and there are two items which, conforming with tradition, accompanied important sections of the recent coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, namely I Was Glad and Zadok the Priest.
We are sure you will find much to enjoy in this well-chosen programme.
FOR NOW Sing with Us – Two FREE sessions remaining:
Discover: what it is like to sing with NCS. We are coming to the end of a series of monthly open rehearsals. Only Two more remain so come along at 7.30pm on the following Mondays: 22 May and 12 June.
We started these sessions in February in great style, some participants choosing to come each week, in all sections.
Join in – it’s not too late to get a flavour of NCS as we prepare a selection of choral favourites for our Summer Concert. These include works by Handel, Mozart, Lauridsen and Hagenberg, the latter choice, a sure winner to bring a tear to the eye!
Sing with us in performance in the lovely setting of Trinity Church Gosforth on 24 June at 7.30pm!
Beyond that become a fully fledged member of NCS and enjoy a rewarding choral experience with exciting opportunities ahead! Whats not to like!
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Newcastle Choral Society, Conductor Mark Anyan, and Hertfordshire Chorus, with their Conductor David Temple, are joining forces for an epic performance at Sage Gateshead on Sunday 1st May 2022 at 3pm. Postponed twice due to the pandemic, this is 3rd time lucky! The concert features Vaughan Williams ‘A Sea Symphony’ which we are delighted to perform in the year celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the composers birth. The concert also features the northern premiere of the critically acclaimed ‘Codebreaker’ written by James McCarthy and commissioned by Hertfordshire Chorus. This charts the life of Alan Turing famous for breaking the German Enigma code during WW2
Ruth Jenkins-Robertsson soprano
Dominic Sedgwick bass
Tickets £25, £20, £5 (under 18s and students)
Box Office 0191 4434661
boxoffice@gateshead.com
If you are a friend or supporter of Newcastle Choral Society, please choose the tickets with the NCS prefix when ordering online or mention NCS at the Box Office
We are grateful from support from Sir James Knott Trust and Hadrian Trust
#Bring back my Choir #Bring back my Band
This is a major campaign launched by Making Music. Working on behalf of amateur musicians in the UK, they are extremely proactive in representations to Government for a route back to performance.
‘Government guidance on reopening the performing arts published on 9 July has caused widespread disappointment, prohibiting amateur groups or groups with amateur participants – unlike professionals – to play or sing together, except in the numbers of people currently allowed to meet in public.
It goes further to say that singing and playing wind and brass instruments isn’t even allowed in those numbers.
The guidance (England only) will only be reviewed when the results of just commissioned research into droplet and aerosol transmission of Covid-19 are available. The devolved administrations are expected to issue similar guidance shortly (Wales: this week, Scotland: next two weeks, NI: n/a).
Many groups, before the guidance came out, were looking forward to meeting again, even with strict risk management measures, and were already hard at work creating a new normal, just as pubs, hairdressers and gyms are doing – considering small sectionals outside, inventing new ways of making music together in socially distanced ways, planning some sort of future. Now, not even groups of 6 outside are permitted if you are singers or wind or brass players; and still only groups of 6 outside if you play anything else.
There is no explanation why amateurs are being treated differently to professionals in this guidance.’ Extract from Making Music’s campaign.
The music industry is currently being significantly supported by amateur musicians. Newcastle Choral Society along with many other local choirs, employs freelance professional music teachers, many professional singers, pays rent and purchases performance materials, as well as hiring concert halls and other venues.
So 
until things change significantly, we must rely on our Zoom sessions on Monday nights. 
We had a surprise guest recently! Will Todd popped into give us a quick run through of Benedictus from his Mass In Blue. What a treat!
Our great achievement this year while in Lockdown was our 2 videos released on YouTube https://youtu.be/BWrFwA-0dEs and https://youtu.be/TxbOUeBSiGs Views exceeded 3000 over the 2 clips. Members of NCS and the Hertfordshire Chorus sang excerpts from James McCarthy’s Codebreaker which we would have sung in Sage Gateshead on 3.5.20 but now rescheduled for 16.5.21. All fingers crossed for that performance.
The second video released on the day of VE75, featured footage of the ‘Forces sweetheart’ Vera Lynn who died recently aged 103! Poignant wartime images as a backdrop to the hauntingly beautiful ‘Sing me at Morn’.
Both videos featured recently on Star & Shadow Radio(https://www.
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On SATURDAY 29 JUNE 2019, 7.30pm
TRINITY CHURCH GOSFORTH
NEWCASTLE CHORAL SOCIETY and NCS CHAMBER CHOIR
Musical Director MARK ANYAN
A bit of Awakening and Toe Tapping went on in our FEEL THE SPIRIT concert last month, the final one of the 18-19 season!
RUTTER Feel the Spirit
TIPPETT Five Spirituals
BRITTEN Rejoice in the Lamb
The audience enjoyed the varied programme and particularly the guest organist Louise Reid who accompanied the choir for the Britten piece Rejoice in the Lamb. Louise’s son Christopher, a chorister at Newcastle Cathedral, sang the Treble in the same piece. Members of the choir took solo roles in the Britten and the Tippett and were declared a hit!
S
ara Louisa Parry mezzo soprano delighted us with 3 pieces by Harold Arlen. Sara, combines a professional singing career with a busy teaching practice. She is a member of vocal trio Closer performing mainly in Switzerland, and in the UK with the Neil Sedaka tribute show Oh! Carol
Our own Eileen Bown accompanied the choir and Sara on piano
NCS Chamber Choir had their own section in the concert singing Charles Wood’s Full Fathom Five and Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies.
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We had a special Summertime Treat on Saturday July 1st! Newcastle Choral Society led by Mark Anyan, joined forces with 60 children from 3 primary schools and the ‘Call Me Al’ quintet led by composer Alexander L’Estrange, to perform his joyous cantata ‘Ahoy’ Sing for the Mary Rose
This was a unique opportunity for the children from Seaton Sluice First School Whitley Bay, Eastlea Primary School Cramlington in south east Northumberland and from St Godrics RC Primary School in Durham to work with professional artists and the choir in the iconic Turbine Hall in The Castlegate, Melbourne Street Newcastle upon Tyne.
Specially designed banners hung from the 5m high steel columns in the Turbine Hall. Each school was given a signed banner to display in their school halls.
A quote from one of the Head teachers ‘It was a wonderful opportunity and I am sure that it is one that the children will remember forever. Thank you too for the banner which we will proudly hang in out school hall!‘
Funding was received from Hadrian Trust and the Roland Cookson Community Fund at the Community Foundation Tyne and Wear and Northumberland.
Support was also acknowledged from The Castlegate and Emma Bunting Creative Designer
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