Nottingham Chamber Singers

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/a-musical-celebration/

#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s weekly emails designed to keep you up to date with MfE events & to circulate interesting finds, special features, and musical musings for your Mondays! We are aiming to send out something new each week.

#MfEMonday – 15th May 2023

15th May 2023 Music for Everyone

MfEMondays is back! From Coronations to Eurovision, we hope you have enjoyed the various festivities over the past couple of weekends – we’re looking forward to a busy time at MfE, starting this Saturday… see below.

Hail, Star of the Sea

This coming Saturday 20^th May (7.30pm start), the Nottingham Chamber Singers are performing at St John’s Church, Beeston.

It will be a wonderful programme of contrast and beauty for voices and strings including Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs. For any of you who came along to the AGM you might remember singing the Brahms and Mendelssohn which will also feature in the concert.

Click here for more details. Click here to book tickets – save money when you book in advance!

*Special 40^th update* More exciting events from MfE as we continue the 40^th celebrations!

The FAMILY SING is now open for booking, happening on Sunday 11 June, open to all keen singers aged 5+ (children must be accompanied by an adult). Singing favourites like ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang and ‘Under the Sea’ from the Little Mermaid, our new Steel Pan ensemble will also be performing with the opportunity to ‘have a go’. Full details and booking link here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/family-sing-workshop/

BLOW THE DUST OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT is on Saturday 17 June – music packs will be going out to all players very soon; items include Edward Elgar’s rousing Imperial March Op.32 and Queen’s iconic rock anthem We are the Champions. Find out full details and book online here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/blow-the-dust-off-your-instrument-3/ or contact the office on 0115 9589312 to book your place over the phone.

A MUSICAL CELEBRATION – 40^th Anniversary Weekend 1 – 2 July 2023

There’s something for everyone at the big weekend!

Vocals – sign up to take part in the youth concert on 1^st July (just £5 per child)
Spotlight on Youth concert: 1^st July, ticket booking is now open.
Daytime Voices & Orchestras – join us on 2^nd July for a Musical Celebration, including speeches and birthday cake!

All details of how YOU can get involved can be found here:

Woodwind players required for a Bulwell based wind band. Anyone is welcome and no weekly subscriptions are required. If you are interested, please contact David on 01159179203 or 07847099245.

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

15/05/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.classical-music.com/features/recordings/best-recordings-rimsky-korsakov/

#MfEMonday – 13th March 2023

13th March 2023 Music for Everyone

We are still riding high from the breath-taking achievement of Saturday night’s concert by the Nottingham Chamber Singers. After an ambitious and varied programme of choral music ranging from the 12^th to the 21^st Centuries, a packed house at St Martin’s Church, Sherwood could be heard cheering several streets away…we imagine!

Huge congratulations to all members of NCS, guest artists Henry Parkes (organ) and John Barker (saxophone), and MfE Assistant Artistic Director Rachel Parkes, under whose direction our wonderful chamber choir sparkled.

This week we celebrate the birthday of beloved Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, born on 18^th March 1844. We have loved exploring this in-depth run down of the best recordings out there of NRK’s works!

This Sunday 19^th March – yes, Mother’s Day! – will see our youth ensembles – Nottingham Youth Band, East Midlands Youth Band, Nottingham Strictly Strings and East Midlands Youth String Orchestra – perform at the Grange Hall in Radcliffe on Trent at 3pm. Tickets available here!

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

13/03/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 27th February 2023

27th February 2023 Music for Everyone

We’ve had an amazing weekend of music making with over 160 young musicians at South Nottinghamshire Academy in Radcliffe on Trent this weekend with Bandwise (Saturday) and Stringwise (Sunday). Can’t wait for their families and friends to hear the result in next weekend’s concert at Nottingham’s Albert Hall!

As we head into March, MfE is looking forward to a busy month of exciting events:

NCS concert – A Multitude of Voices on Saturday 11^th March at St Martin’s Church, Sherwood. Tickets available in advance here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/march-ncs/ or on the door.
We’re excited to announce 3 of MfE’s youth groups will be ‘day-tripping’ to Birmingham for the Music for Youth Regional Festival on Tuesday 14^th March, playing in the CBSO Centre!
MfE youth groups Mother’s Day concert on Sunday 19^th March at the Grange in Radcliffe on Trent, tickets available in advance or on the door.

Music has been proven to have a positive effect on our health and some new research has shown how long it can take to feel happier, or more relaxed or even to overcome sadness.

It won’t come as a surprise that music with a slow tempo is best for relaxation, although it might be of interest to learn that 13 minutes is the optimum listening time for feeling peaceful and contented compared to 9 minutes of a driving rhythm and fast tempo to help you to feel uplifted.

Find out more here: https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/music-to-release-sadness-and-feel-happier-study/ for the stats and percentages!

Have you seen ‘The Piano’ on channel 4 as pianist Lang Lang and popstar Mika search for the top amateur pianists by listening to them perform at popular train station pianos in St Pancras, Birmingham New Street, Leeds and Glasgow? 13 year old Lucy plays a stunning version of a Chopin nocturne here: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/chopin/blind-pianist-lang-lang-the-piano/

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

27/02/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 20th February 2023

20th February 2023 Music for Everyone

Tickets are still available for the Nottingham Chamber Singers’ Multitude of Voices concert at St Martin’s in Sherwood on 11 March. Join them as they dive into the rich, exquisite and relatively under-represented canon of choral works by female composers.

The concert, in the same week as International Women’s Day, will take the opportunity to celebrate 900 years of Passiontide themed motets, both reflective and uplifting from the 11th Century Abbess and Polymath Hildegard von Bingen through to the emerging and talented Kerensa Briggs (b.1991). Throughout the concert, acclaimed Saxophonist John Barker will be weaving transcendent melodies into and around our program, culminating in a second half performance of the beautiful Son of God Mass by James Whitbourn to ease you into Eastertide.

Click here for more information and here to book.

The youth groups are gearing up for a busy month of March, working towards their Mother’s Day concert on Sunday 19^th March at The Grange in Radcliffe on Trent, an instrumental treat for all! Click here for more information

We are really looking forward to welcoming 161 young instrumentalists to our Bandwise and Stringwise courses this weekend! After a weekend of being put through their paces by our crack team of experts they will then come together for a showcase concert at the Albert Hall on Sunday 05 March. We can’t wait to hear their joint performance of ‘Feelin’ Good’ arranged by our very own Josh Goodman. Perhaps most famously recorded by Nina Simone, it was first performed by Guyanese-British singer Cy Grant on the opening night of The Roar of the Greasepaint at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham on 3 August 1964!

Click here to find out what song was number one on the day you were born. The current range in the office is Fernando by Abba to I Owe You Nothing by Bros – but we’re not going to reveal who came out dancing to Abba!

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

20/02/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 6th February 2023

6th February 2023 Music for Everyone

What a treat from the combined forces of the Nottingham Festival Chorus and Concert Orchestra on Saturday evening. The sound was thrilling and as rich and varied as the programme itself, with works by Parry, Finzi, Tippett, Delius, Gjeilo and Vaughan Williams. Conductors, Angela Kay and Rachel Parkes were delighted by the performance. Congratulations to all those involved!

A message from MfE Director – Donna Fox

We are pleased to announce that Arts Council England is supporting Music for Everyone’s 40^th Anniversary season this year. The theme is “Celebration”.

With a focus on inclusion, we will be celebrating the achievements of female leadership in Classical Music, such as our Founder Angela Kay MBE, female composers, conductors and musicians. We will be holding a special gala weekend on 1^st July (youth) and 2^nd July (adults) so watch this space for more details about how to get involved. We hope to engage new participants as we broaden and diversify our offer to include a new Open Voices session in Mansfield, as well as weekly Steel Pan and World Drumming ensembles. Let’s celebrate!!!
Watch this space for further details!

Places are now available on our next Vocals weekend in April. There will be rounds, part-songs, percussion and dancing, as well as popular songs from Encanto, Aladdin, Matilda and Trolls World Tour! If you know any youngsters who love singing please pass on the details.

A random one this week! We have been contacted by one of our members who sent us a picture of a lace bobbin with an inscription ‘Blow the Dust’ etched into it. This got us thinking about the importance of lacemaking locally as our office is on the edge of the Lace Market, once the heart of the worlds lace industry.

Did you know that lace makers used songs to help them with their work? These were known as Lacemaking Tells.

The Lacemaking Tells are unaccompanied counting songs and rhymes sung/chanted by young lacemakers, particularly used in the lace schools, when they are first being taught to make lace.

These songs tended to be made up of fragments of ballads, nursery rhymes and sometimes even hymns, and re-hashed and appropriated to serve the lacemaking process. The rhythm of the songs helped them to build up speed when making lace and also helped them to stay awake during the night shifts!

Here’s a track from folk singer and viola player Jackie Oates and Jon Spiers called Needle Pin, Needle Pin based on these lacemaking tells: https://youtu.be/rWCWld_XjFA

Do we have any lacemakers out there? We would love to know if you still sing whilst you work!

We still have places available on the next Bandwise and Stringwise courses at the end of February – open to all young musicians! Click the course name to find out more details and sign up!

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

06/02/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/nfc-concert/

#MfEMonday – 30th January 2023

30th January 2023 Music for Everyone

Hello! If you thought January and February were cold and dormant months, then you’ve obviously never been in the office at MfE!

We’ve already had a busy and exciting Blow the Dust day and the youth groups fantastic New Year Concert, whilst our daytime groups have been up and running in full swing for two weeks. This week in particular is a special one for us, as it sees the culmination of the massive hard-work and effort that goes into the Nottingham Festival Chorus weekend. Part of the unique selling point of MfE is that we are able to give people the chance to be part of a large-scale musical event, accompanied by our fabulous full orchestra, without asking for vast time commitment in the run-up. Singers have been busily learning their notes from our carefully curated ‘CD practise tracks’, whilst some came along in person to our friendly sectional rehearsals in deepest darkest January. This past weekend saw the massed chorus meeting at NTU Clifton to look at their notes in detail with Angela Kay and Rachel Parkes, and we can tell you that the results were stunning. Much fun was had, and many different muscles – singing, brain and body (!) were stimulated. There were also many biscuits consumed!

We thought they sounded magnificent, and if you’d like to hear the results for yourself, make sure you book your ticket for Saturday 4^th Feb 7.30pm at the Albert Hall this week. **10% discount available for MfE members and all singers on the course.**

We hope to see you there!

As part of our varied programme of musical delights on Saturday, the choir and orchestra will be performing some of the spirituals from Michael Tippett’s Child of Our Time. These immensely moving works take their origins from African-American songs dating from the slave-trade. As we near Oscar season, we thought we’d leave you with some incredible examples of how these tunes have been used over the decades in movies on the big screen… perhaps you have some more examples for us, we always love hearing them!

O Brother Where Art Thou (2000) — “Down to the River to Pray”
The Apostle (1998) — “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord,” “Nearer My God to Thee,” “There Is a River,” “In the Garden,” “I Love to Tell the Story,” “Victory Is Mine,” “There Is Power in the Blood”, “I’ll Fly Away”
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993) — “Oh Happy Day,” “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”.
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Selma (2014) ‘Take my hand precious lord’
Harriet (2019)

Our next VOCALS workshop and concert for young singers is now open for booking! We’ll be celebrating songs from ‘around the world’ – take a look on our website for all the details: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/vocals-apr-2023/

Have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

30/01/2023

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/best-festive-classical-music/

#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s weekly emails designed to keep you up to date with MfE events & to circulate interesting finds, special features, and motivational moments for your Mondays! We are aiming to send out something new each week.

#MfEMonday – 12th December 2022

12th December 2022 Music for Everyone

What an amazing concert yesterday to end such a Christmassy week for MfE! A great big WELL DONE to all the singers in Vocals and Nottingham Community Voices for a great performance and a special thank you to Santa for taking the time to drop by.

We have been getting into the festive spirit with this great playlist of classical Christmas favourites – perfect for tree decorating, present wrapping and anything else that requires an alternative to Chris Rea!

There are still a few places left for Blow The Dust Off Your Instrument! If you are looking at that cello in the attic, clarinet in the garage or trumpet in shed (don’t keep trumpets in sheds please) you have just a few days left to sign up for our 7th January BTD! All the info and how to book online is here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/blow-the-dust-off-your-instrument-3/

Stay warm and have a great week!

Your friends at MfE.

12/12/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 5th December 2022

5th December 2022 Music for Everyone

Happy Advent! The festive season is finally upon us, and here at MfE we certainly know how to kick off in style.

Yesterday afternoon saw St Mary’s Church in Bunny aglow with candlelight as the Nottingham Chamber Singers took us on a mystical journey through Chilcott’s setting of the great ‘O Antiphons’ interspersed with advent carols and images.

What started as an audio and visual feast then became an actual feast, as wassail cups and ginger cake were passed around, and the choir (and audience!) really got into the spirit of Christmas. There were rousing drinking songs such as Landlord fill the flowing bowl, Good Ale and the Boar’s Head Carol and a highly raucous Twelve Days of Christmas!

However, don’t worry if you think you’ve missed out as there will be plenty more where that came from…..

More festive dates this week:

Tuesday 6^th December

11.30am the Loughborough Daytime Orchestra and guest singers will be performing a festive concert at All Saints church in Loughborough as part of their Christmas Tree Festival. Free.

Thursday 8^th December – THREE EVENTS!!!

11am the Nottingham Daytime Orchestra will be presenting their end of term concert at St Martin’s church Sherwood. Free.
Approx 1.15pm – 1.45pm the Lunchtime Voices will be singing some of their repertoire, along with popular Christmas songs and carols to join in with on the 2^nd Floor of John Lewis Department Store (home furnishings) within the Victoria Centre. We’d love to see some friendly faces, and we will be shaking the MfE donation buckets in time to Jingle Bells!!!
6pm at Nottingham Train Station – The Youth Bands will be playing festive music in the main ticket hall, so if you can drop by and support after work, they’d greatly appreciate it!

AND FINALLY!

Sunday, 11^th December at 3.30pm in the Nottingham Albert Hall – if you haven’t purchased your ticket for Christmas is Coming! yet, it’s going to be fabulous. We can’t wait! https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/christmas-is-coming/

The ‘O antiphons’, likely dating from the sixth century, were traditionally used at vespers on the last seven days of Advent in Western Christian traditions. They contain an interesting and clever twist, as the first letters of their titles appear to form a Latin acrostic Sarc Ore, which when flipped around become Ero cras, meaning ‘Tomorrow, I will be there’, mirroring the theme of the antiphons.

Christmas pun alert!

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

05/12/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/blow-the-dust-off-your-instrument-3/

#MfEMonday – 24th October 2022

24th October 2022 Music for Everyone

November is just around the corner, that must mean that MfE Christmas and 2023 events are now open for booking!

Concerts

Nottingham Chamber Singers present A Mystical Christmas at 3.30pm on Sunday 4^th December at St Mary the Virgin Church in Bunny.

Christmas is Coming! On Sunday 11^th December, members of the MfE ‘singing family’ come together for MfE’s annual Christmas concert at the Albert Hall, Nottingham, featuring a special appearance from Father Christmas! Children tickets are just £5 each.

Further details and ticket booking link for concerts can be found here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/whats-on/concerts/

Workshops/Courses

Christmas Vocals – open to all primary aged singers, a singing afternoon on Saturday 10^th December, then join the Christmas is Coming concert to perform on Sunday 11^th December! https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/vocals-christmas-is-coming/

Nottingham Community Voices – Christmas. Members of Daytime Voices and Community Voices are invited to join Vocals on Sunday 11^th December at the Albert Hall, Nottingham for MfE’s annual Christmas concert. Optional rehearsals from 28^th November, https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/christmas-is-coming-daytime-voices/

Blow the Dust off your Instrument Saturday 7^th January 2023

Nottingham Festival Chorus workshop weekend and concert 28/29 January & 4 February 2023

https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/nfc-course-weekend/

The Nottingham Festival Chorus will be celebrating the 150^th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams in their next event, a singing weekend course and concert in January/February 2023, performing the stunning work Toward the Unknown Region.

The anniversary itself is being commemorated and celebrated throughout 2022 (our celebration comes a little later than the actual anniversary!) with October being the anniversary of his birth.

A champion of music-making in the community, he was a central figure to British musical life. His work The Lark Ascending is regularly voted the UK’s favourite classical work, and he was well known for writing for most major forms of genre in music, including film and stage.

Have a listen to brighten a rainy Monday to The Lark Ascending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR2JlDnT2l8

Bake Off fever has hit the office again, we’ve been enjoying some musical puns linked to baking – this one in particular made us giggle!

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

24/10/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF