Christchurch Choral Festival

This festival is intended to bring choirs together with an annual opportunity to share repertoire on a larger scale.

As in past years, individual choirs will be grouped into convenient clusters, performing for up to 10 minutes, and choosing their own items, conductors and accompanists. Combined inner-city church choirs, directed by Paul Ellis, and co-ordinated by the Royal School of Church Music, will open the concert with an evocative Hymn To The Trinity by Tchaikovsky, followed by the beautiful Byrd Ave Verum, and concluding with the ever-popular Jesu, Joy by Bach. The Community Choirs of Christchurch will be co-ordinated by Henry Nicholson, singing two popular arrangements. Young singers will include the Christchurch Boys’ Choir, directed by Robert Gaudin, and the Christchurch Girls’ Choir, conducted by Shannon Hurley. This year’s concert choir will be Cecilian Singers, directed by Jared Corbett, presenting A Little Jazz Mass, by Bob Chilcott. The “barbershop” tradition will be represented this year by both The Plainsmen and the widely travelled Christchurch City Chorus.

Admission will be free, and participants will pay nothing. There will be no interval, and the concert should last one hour. All performers should be in place by 1.30 pm on the day, to rehearse the concluding combined item, chosen to mark this coronation year: Handel’s Zadok The Priest Scores and MP3’s for shared musical items are available online at www.cathedral.org.nz/cbsfestivals.html