Past seasons: 2003-2004 Season

Saturday 4th October 2003 - "Voices for Hospices" We participated again this year in the nation-wide "come & sing" for Hospices. We were delighted to support St Luke's Hospice and, together with Trinity Orchestra, lead the performance of Mozart's Requiem at the Elliott Hall, Harrow Arts Centre in Hatch End. In addition, we sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah and the choir also performed three other works by Mozart - Laudate Dominum, Ave Verum Corpus and Exultate Jubilate. Our concert soloists included Ian Caley (tenor) Tania Williams (Alto) and Christopher Dixon (Bass). As our soprano soloist, we were delighted to welcome back Denise Leigh - co-winner of Channel 4's Operatunity. Some of you may also have had the pleasure of hearing Denise sing with us at our Away-Day to Burford in July (see 2002/2003 Season).

Saturday 13th December 2003 - Christmas Concert We returned to the Speech Room at Harrow School for our ever-popular (and usually sell-out) concert - this year being no exception. We were supported by the excellent Barbican Brass. Our programme, as usual, included a very wide range of Christmas music, some traditional, some very old and some very new but all, we hope, highly entertaining and enjoyable. Among the lesser known pieces was a superb modern carol sequence entitled Daystar in Winter which was actually commissioned by, and written for, the choir just over 20 years ago by Geoffrey Bush to poems by Charles Causley. Other highlights included a beautiful 12 part Canon by Mozart for which Brian Levison wrote some quite enchanting new lyrics and named the work The Fields of Bethlehem.

Our reader this year was Suzanne West. Suzanne trained at RADA and has performed numerous professional acting roles, both classical and popular, throughout Europe and the UK. Those who enjoy Galaxy Caramel, particularly if purchased with an American Express card, may also have recognised her distinctive voice from a range of TV adverts. We're delighted to say that Suzanne also sings soprano with us.

Saturday 3rd April 2004 - Spring Concert. This concert was also held at the highly atmospheric Speech Room venue and we performed Elijah by Mendelssohn. Our soloist were Lynne Hirst (Soprano), Tania Williams (Contralto), Nicholas Sales (Tenor) and, as Elijah, the very popular Damien Thantrey (Baritone) who has sung with us on numerous occasions in the past.

Saturday 10th July 2004 - Summer Concert. The main work for our concert at St George's Church, Headstone was the beautiful Mass in D by Dvorak and we also performed Howard Blake's Song of St Francis. Bernard Barker played some carefully selected organ solo pieces to complete a very well balanced and enjoyable programme. The Blake piece was written entirely in Italian which stood the choir in good stead for our tour to Tuscany which followed later in the month. (see head of this page).

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