Media release: open workshop 25 September 09

MEDIA RELEASE
CROUCH END FESTIVAL CHORUS OPEN WORKSHOP

All welcome at free try-out session for renowned north London choir

7.30pm 25 September 2009, | Fortismere school, Muswell Hill N10 
 
An exquisite opportunity is coming your way in September.   You have the chance to sample an outstanding work involving music by Benjamin Britten, arguably one of the few really important composers of the twentieth century, and poems by Wilfred Owen, the most famous of all anti-war poets: the War Requiem, of course.  The work will be performed at the Barbican on 7 November by the internationally acclaimed Crouch End Festival Chorus – but you’ll have to pay for that.  This choir is offering a preview absolutely free, 7.30pm, Friday 25 September at Fortismere School, Tetherdown, Muswell Hill. It will be a workshop with singing (you can join in if you like), with David Temple, the distinguished conductor of the choir in the lead,with explorations of the history of the composition, with snippets from the original recording of the work in Coventry Cathedral in May 1962 to mark the rebuilding of the cathedral after it was bombed in 1940… and more.  All this is but one event in CEFC’s 25th anniversary celebrations.

Britten was a Suffolk man, closely associated with Aldeburgh.  Once upon a time, if you had ventured towards the yachting-cap end of Aldeburgh beach, you might have sat in a shelter dedicated to “the talented composer, Benjamin Britten”.  Talented?  Those patronising burghers of the town might have substituted for talented “the finest English composer since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695”. No wonder the shelter is long gone.  And as for Wilfred Owen, how many schoolchildren have shed pre-conceived notions about the romantic (read ‘soppy’) nature of poetry on encountering his Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori?  This is one of the poems Britten included in his War Requiem.  It has a most serious purpose shared by all who have suffered from war or who have joined a demonstration to express their horror of war.  As Martin Kettle wrote recently in the Guardian, “Benjamin Britten wanted to be a useful and practical musician”.

It will be a great evening, and not a penny to pay!.  You may even fancy auditioning after you’ve heard what the choir can do.  There are spaces among the tenors and basses, even one or two in the altos.  The sopranos sound heavenly as they are – you’d pay a lot to hear such harmonies on the South Bank – but you never know, there could be a place among them for you. 

Be there!  Friday 25 September, 7.30, Fortismere School, everyone welcome.

NOTES

In the last year, Crouch End Festival Chorus has sung at the BBC Proms and the BBC Electric Proms; in its own promotion of Bach’s B Minor Mass at the Barbican, and in its debut at the new Kings Place in a week of events curated by David Temple, the choir’s conductor and co-founder. The chorus has recently recorded albums with Ray Davies and Kate Royal.  The choir celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2009, during which it has given world premieres by Matthew Ferraro, Orlando Gough and jazz composer Roland Perrin.