The VOCES8 Foundation welcomes friends from around the world to its home in London for its latest winter festival of iconic oratorios, traditional songs and new premieres, as its album ‘A Choral Christmas’ is released on Decca Classics.
LIVE From London Christmas 2023 will comprise six festive concerts released online from 4 December 2023 and remaining available on-demand until 7 January 2024, with a line-up including triple Grammy-nominated US ensemble Skylark, The Gesualdo Six, VOCES8, Apollo5, the VOCES8 Foundation Choir and its Orchestra, the festival will see the return of renowned seasonal works including Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and an extra special free-access family event to be gifted ahead of the festival.
Tickets for all concerts can be purchased via www.livefromlondon.org. Following the live stream on 4 December, all other performances will be available to watch live or on demand from 5 December until 7 January 2024, with the exception of ‘Silver Bells’ (out 23 December).
LIVE From London Summer 2023 launches
Filmed in beautiful locations around the world and accompanied by suitcases bursting with exclusive performances, LIVE From London’s tenth festival offers you ‘a drop of golden sun’.
Host ensemble VOCES8 features in four of the nine concerts and begins by taking you exclusively behind-the-scenes on the group’s European summer tour. Barnaby Smith leads VOCES8 and members of its Foundation Choir in a Byrd 400 celebration which includes his Mass for Five Voices sung by Apollo5. Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir is the centerpoint of VOCES8 and its VOCES8 Scholars’ concert filmed from idyllic Milton Abbey. The group’s final concert sprinkling of Stardust pairs Britten (arr. Imogen Holst) Rejoice in the Lamb conducted by Barnaby Smith, alongside the world premiere of To Sing of Love, a new concerto written for Jack Liebeck and The VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra by popular American composer Taylor Scott Davis.
Internationally renowned festival newcomers include Wishful Singing in concert with composer and pianist Ola Gjeilo, Tafelmusik performs Mozart and Haydn with star Baroque violinist Rachel Podger, and Chamber Choir Ireland conducted by Eamonn Dougan, unveils a beautiful programme of Sir James MacMillan and his influences, ‘O Radiant Dawn’ - prefaced by an interview with the composer himself. Making a requested return, I Fagiolini sings of The Seasons in its engagingly dramatic programme ‘Au Naturel’, and Mary Bevan and Davina Clarke present a Handel concert of ‘Sweet Stillness’ from their recent album release.
Nine concerts featuring six centuries of stunning repertoire, filmed in locations from Toronto to Denmark, Dorset and Dublin – LIVE From London Summer 2023 almost certainly includes ‘a few of your favourite things’.
Purchase tickets here
Home – VOCES8 and Eric Whitacre album release
Two branches of choral royalty entwine with majestic harmony on the latest release from Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre and acclaimed vocal ensemble VOCES8. The album includes a world premiere, All Seems Beautiful To Me, and a new recording of Whitacre’s deeply moving 2019 cantata The Sacred Veil.
The five-minute work All Seems Beautiful To Me is based on a poem by Walt Whitman (from Song of the Open Road) celebrating the human spirit’s capacity for generosity and growth. It was commissioned by the United States Air Force Band and here receives its world premiere recording. Also included is a new recording of one of Whitacre’s most frequently performed and much loved pieces, The Seal Lullaby.
The album also includes Sing Gently and Go, Lovely Rose. The former was composed during lockdown specially for Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, made up of over 17,500 singers from 124 different countries. The latter was Whitacre’s first ever composition, written 30 years ago, and thus the new album is also, in part, a joyful celebration of his three decades as a composer.
The longest work is the twelve-movement, hour-long 2019 cantata The Sacred Veil for choir, cello (Emma Denton), and piano (Christopher Glynn). The text, by Whitacre’s close friend and long-time collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri, commemorates the death of the poet’s young wife Julie from ovarian cancer. It journeys from the growth of their love, through the birth of their children, to their struggle with the illness. One particularly striking section ‘You Rise, I Fall’ involves extraordinary descending and ascending tone-clusters mirroring the emotional states of the dying woman and her husband.
Listen / purchase links here.
Live From London – Christmas festival 2020
Live From London returns with a Christmas festival running from December 1st – January 6th
The festival is split into two parts:
Live From London – Christmas: The first 11 concerts from 1st – 25th December and including the Gabrieli’s first Bach concert on Christmas Day
Bach for Christmas: All 6 concerts by the Gabrieli Consort & Players – Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV248 – starting on 25th December and ending on Epiphany, 6th January
A particular highlight on 15th December is the Choir of Westminster Abbey singing from Westminster Abbey itself. Viewers from around the world will this year have the rare opportunity to share in the magic of the annual Abbey Christmas concert.
The repertoire across the festival ranges from Bach, Praetorius, Eccard, Charpentier and Tallis to Howells, Britten, Pärt, Tavener, Michael McGlynn, Ola Gjeilo, and arrangements of best-loved Christmas pop, all filmed in ultra-high definition and featuring your favourite seasonal a cappella
Award-winning groups featuring include VOCES8, The Choir of Westminster Abbey, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, The Tallis Scholars, Take 6, I Fagiolini, London Adventist Chorale, ANÚNA, amarcord, The Aeolians, and Apollo5
With its first concert since lock-down, the Gabrieli Consort & Players perform Bach for Christmas, joined by a stunning lineup of soloists (including Carolyn Sampson, Anna Dennis, Tim Mead, Roderick Williams and Ashley Riches). Experience Bach’s Christmas Oratorio cantatas, each on the day for which they are liturgically written.
The festival supports the VOCES8 Foundation’s global message of ‘music education for all’ by gifting youth ensembles from across the world a stage for their singing in our Young Performer Spotlight (YPS). The lineup includes: Gabrieli Roar, VOCES8 Scholars, Canterbury Cathedral Girls’ Choir, VERSA, National Youth Chamber Choir of Great Britain, Voices of Singapore Children’s Choir and German Gents.
The festival includes six new VOCES8 commissions from Ken Burton, Melissa Dunphy, Jocelyn Hagen, Taylor Scott Davis, Paul Smith and Roderick Williams that will be published by Edition Peters in the VOCES8 Singles range, as well the premiere of a new violin part in Men and Angels written by Alec Roth especially for Rachel Podger.
More information and tickets sales can be found here.
Live From London – livestream concert series launched from VOCES8 Centre
‘Live From London‘ is a new, paid-for online festival from the VOCES8 Foundation, featuring some of the world’s finest award-winning vocal ensembles: VOCES8, I Fagiolini, Stile Antico, The Swingles, The Sixteen (from Kings Place), The Gesualdo Six, Apollo5, Chanticleer (from San Francisco) and a special guest appearance by The Academy of Ancient Music. The ensembles will be performing their favourite works, and pieces for which they’ve become renowned, singing repertoire from the Renaissance to contemporary A Cappella.
The promotional trailer for ‘Live From London’ is here.
The festival is a heart-warming display of vocal ensembles helping each other in a time of crisis. These concerts will be some of the first performances by the ensembles since the start of the lock-down restrictions at the beginning of the year.
The festival will be broadcast in HD every Saturday for ten weeks from the 1st August 2020 at VOCES8’s beautiful Centre (St Anne and St Agnes Church), in the heart of the City of London.
Taking the lead from current sporting events, the concerts will be broadcast from a closed venue. Singers and crew will be following the strict government guidelines about safety and distancing in the workplace.
Viewers will be able to pay for exclusive access to the entire season or individual concert tickets. Season passes are £80 (only £8 per concert, per household). Single concert tickets will be available for £12.50. Concessions have been crafted for students and choirs across the world, as well as special deals for promoters and venues. It has been designed to raise money for artists, venues and promoters to cover their COVID-19 losses, and to reunite the world’s many singers, and audiences with much needed live concerts.
A portion of all ticket sales will be put towards funding for grassroots music education, and to addressing topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in choral music. Artists will share income from season ticket sales, as well as individual concert income.
This approach goes beyond free streaming on social media, allowing a revenue channel for promoters, venues and artists (most of whom are freelance).
More information, and tickets for ‘Live From London’ can be found at: voces8.foundation/livefromlondon
Apollo5 new EP “Where All Roses Go” released
Where All Roses Go – EP Vol. 1
To mark the tenth Anniversary of Apollo5, the group has recorded 3 digital EPs which will form the album “Where All Roses Go”. The first EP is released now!
EP Vol.1 Track List:
Veni Domine – Francisco Guerrero
This Marriage – Eric Whitacre
Civitas sancti tui – William Byrd
Mother of God, here I stand – John Tavener
Edo Lullaby – trad. Japanese arr. Paul Smith
Two further digital EPs will be released over the coming months and the full album will be released in the new year. The album will be a digital and physical release.
See how and where to stream and download the album here. Buy the physical album here.
The whole album explores that most complex human emotion: love.
Love has many different manifestations. It is a rich tapestry intricately woven with conflicting strands: life and loss; beauty and mortality; brave romance and fragility in rejection; the steadfast devotion of a mother’s love (heightened by the awareness of inevitable separation); and in the Christian narrative the Virgin Mary and the eventual ultimate sacrifice.
The repertoire chosen for this first EP reflects love in a variety of these strands. This Marriage, by Eric Whitacre is a beautiful setting of an extract of a poem by Rumi which is a blessing for love within a marriage. Both Veni Domine by Francisco Guerrero and Civitas Sancti Tui by William Byrd speak of God’s redeeming love in the face of human despair. Mother of God, by John Tavener and Edo Lullaby, arr. by Paul Smith reflect the love of the Mother: the first as a prayer to the Virgin Mary and the second a lullaby sung by a mother to her child.
The cover artwork and title refer to that most potent symbol of love and its transience: the rose. Apollo5 explores this idea through a varied collection of repertoire spanning 500 years and several musical styles. The release includes works by composers as broad-ranging as Josquin des Prez, Francisco Guerrero, Eric Whitacre, John Taverner, Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Gerald Finzi and Michael McGlynn. The programme also features arrangements written especially for Apollo5 (including pop songs by Elton John and Seal) and several new commissions from contemporary composers such as David Fawcett, Paul Smith, Taylor Davis and Fraser Wilson.
Apollo5 unites this diverse collection of choral music, from some of the earliest known polyphonic writing through to the world of pop, in an energetic exploration of the joy and despair of human love.
Apollo5 is part of the VOCES8 Foundation.
VOCES8 Foundation #LiveFromHome series
The VOCES8 Foundation continues its #LiveFromHome series this week. Each day at 2pm (UK) / 10am (EST) a member of the Foundation – which comprises VOCES8, Apollo5, Paul Smith, the VOCES8 Scholars as well as choral leaders – offers a broadcast on a different aspect of the choral world, interactive and participatory. On Thursday 9th the US composer Jake Runestad will be onscreen in The Weekly Interview. He follows previous interviews with Ola Gjeilo and Roxanna Panufnik.
#LiveFromHome info is at the Foundation website at voces8.foundation/livefromhome
And if you’re enjoying it all, please consider donating to help to keep producing music in the future.
voces8.foundation/donate
New VOCES8 EP release: ‘Devotion’
After Silence is the celebration of VOCES8‘s 15th anniversary. Successive online EPs released in four chapters – Remembrance, Devotion, Redemption and Elemental – will be followed by After Silence, a double album with a beautifully produced booklet, illustrated with contemporary artworks and illuminating notes that add an extra dimension to the exploration of the themes.
Devotion has a dual aspect: religious observance or divine worship, on the one hand; the fact of being deeply attached to a beloved object, on the other. These sacred and secular passions provide inspiration for the transcendent harmonies displayed in the selection of works that make up the second part of After Silence, reflecting on love, death and the life of the spirit.
RepertoireA Boy and a Girl Eric Whitacre
The Three Kings Jonathan Dove
Lully, Lulla, Lullay Philip Stopford
Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata Claudio Monteverdi
Jesus bleibet meine Freude BWV 147 Johann Sebastian Bach
Pre-order or stream Devotion here!
VOCES8 Foundation wins at the Music & Drama Education Awards
The VOCES8 Foundation has been awarded the Classic FM Public Choice Award at the Music & Drama Education Awards, UK. It’s given to an individual or organisation which the general public feels has had the most significant positive impact on classical music education in the UK over the past year. This is a great tribute to Apollo5, VOCES8, Paul Smith, musician, composer, public speaker and all the Foundation team.
See all the categories and winners here.
VOCES8 in USA for Winter Tour 2020
VOCES8 are in the USA again with a 16-date concert tour, with plenty of workshop activity too. Amongst events on this trip are an Instagram Live event with Eric Whitacre on Feb 16th at 1pm EST to coincide with the group’s video release of Eric’s ‘A Boy and a Girl’.
All the group’s tour dates are at www.voces8.com/tour
