Dates for your diary

Rehearsals for our Autumn term start on Tuesday 24 September – please aim to get there from 7pm to give time for registration and to pick up your music scores.

Then we’ll meet every Tuesday, 7.30pm – 9.30pm until 10 December, with a break on 22 and 29 October. By taking the extra week off before the London half-term, we’ll get ten rehearsals as usual.

And our end of term Christmas concert will be on Saturday 14 December.

All rehearsals will be at William Ellis School, Highgate Road, London NW5 1RN.

First time singing with us?

New singers are welcome to try out for a week without obligation. Committed singers pay a term fee of £55 – please bring cash or a cheque to pay. Sorry, we can’t take card payments. Full-time students and those dependent on working-age benefits pay a fee of just £10.

What are we singing?

Ola Gjeilo Sunrise Mass

Philip Godfrey A Christmas Cantata

Here’s a bit more about the composers and the music:

Ola Gjeilo, a Norwegian composer who lives now in New York City, composed his “Sunrise Mass” by setting the traditional Gregorian text (somewhat abridged) with a modern score: meditative, almost magical, yielding sounds that carry the old text. This is an an ambient, atmospheric piece but it is also full of memorable melodies.

Philip Godfrey is a local composer, conductor and pianist and our seasoned singers will know him from when he stands in for Mark or Ian at rehearsals. His “A Christmas Cantata” was commissioned by Islington Choral Society in 1999. We sang it in Autumn 2009, with the recommendation that “it has everything a conductor looks for in a modern work to be presented to an audience of wide-ranging tastes – memorable melodies, enough challenges to keep the choir interested, an expertly crafted orchestration and an intelligent and perceptive choice of texts for the season, both sacred and secular.”

We look forward to seeing you!