Popular Harrogate choir prepares for Reflective music for Remembrance under new musical director
A renowned Harrogate chamber choir is to perform a concert of reflection for Remembrance Day under its new musical director.
Vocalis will take to the stage at the Wesley Centre on Oxford Street in Harrogate on Saturday, November 9 at 7pm with new Musical Director James Savage-Hanford who boasts a successful career as a singer, conductor, and musicologist.
Called Reflective Music for Remembrance, the programme will include music by English 20th century composers and features Herbert Howells’ Requiem, one of the most beautiful works in the English sacred musical canon together with his dramatic and moving anthem Take him Earth, for Cherishing.
The Requiem is associated with Howells's grief for his young son Michael and his anthem was written in commemoration of JK Kennedy US President: both express not only grief but also hope.
The Vocalis concert will also include the wonderful anthem for chorus and organ, Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice, composed in 1946 by Gerald Finzi, who lived in Harrogate as a boy and studied with Edward Farrar at Christ Church Harrogate and later with Edward Bairstow at York Minster.
It is fitting that Bairstow’s anthem Blessed City, Heavenly Salem is included, together with a much-loved 19th century part song by Robert Lucas Pearsall: the richly harmonic Lay a Garland.
Vocalis will also welcome Alastair Stone, Assistant Organist at Ripon Cathedral, who will accompany the choir.
Tickets with concessions for full-time students and under-19’s – plus carers accompanying people requiring assistance going free – are available at: https://www.harrogatevocalis.org.uk/