Reviews
Barbican, 10 January 10
CEFC performed Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation) with London Orchestra da Camera, Miriam Allen, Joshua Ellicott and Stephan Loges.
“It was done by the truly excellent Crouch End Festival Chorus … its Barbican Creation was a joy, alive with motivated energy and the balanced strength that not so many amateur choruses achieve. Too often, what you hear is like a boiled sweet with a chewy centre: decently crisp definition from the sopranos and basses at the outer edge but with a murky vagueness from the altos and (especially) tenors in the middle. With the CEFC, though, you get definition from the inner parts as well. And it comes with commitment. No coasting. No attention lapses. It’s all there – very effectively marshalled by the choir’s conductor David Temple and, on this occasion, enhanced by three fine soloists.”
Michael White in telegraph.co.uk
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Ray Davies, Hammersmith Apollo, 20 December 09
CEFC and Ray Davies sang tracks from Kinks Choral Collection.
“[One] of the best gigs of the year … The idea of using a choir alongside a band for rock music proved so effective, and at times so genuinely moving, that I wondered why it was such a rare occurrence.”
David Lister in The Independent
“[Ray Davies's] decision to rework these songs with his local symphonic choir, The Crouch End Festival Chorus, proves utterly inspired. The ranks of men and women dressed in black, adding their choral harmonies, emphasises Davies’s quality of English eccentricity, the deep affection for his culture that lies at the root of his material, while simultaneously refreshing the familiar with a musical curve ball.”
Neil McCormick in The Telegraph
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“… The live result [of the Kinks Choral Collection project] was wildly uplifting … ‘See My Friends’ becomes an eerie, a capella incantation with a sonorous tribal undertone, stripped down and heart-burstingly beautiful. The hair stood up on your neck. ‘Days’ was even more astonishing. Davies’s voice, slowed and against nothing but acoustic guitar, was meditative; then the Chorus eased in, with a sweeping, poignant elegance. You realised how many of these songs are really elegies; the arrangement suits them and gives them grace.”
Glyn Brown in theartsdesk.com
“Together, [Ray Davies and CEFC] re-imagined the Kinks classic ‘See My Friends’ as a haunting a capella, and turned ‘Victoria’ into near-gospel through a massive call-and-response section. ‘Waterloo Sunset’ still sounded like the greatest song ever written about London; Davies remains one of its finest songwriters.”
Rick Pearson in the London Evening Standard
Royal Albert Hall - BBC Proms, 2 August 09
Crouch End Festival Chorus joined the BBC Symphony Chorus and the Bach Choir for Berlioz’s Te Deum at the BBC Proms.
“… awesome singing … its impact was overwhelming”
Tim Ashley in the Guardian
Barbican, 6 July 09
Reviewer Kate Sole was blown away by her first ever choral concert, featuring the Faure Requiem and the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony. The performance even rivalled her previous night’s outing to see Take That at Wembley.
“… within the first minutes of Requiem I had goosebumps … stirring forte moments and poetic piano sections were beautifully executed under Temple’s enthusiastic direction”
Kate Sole in the East London and West Essex Guardian series
Monster Moves, Five TV, summer 2009
Crouch End Festival Chorus’s contribution to the quirky engineering series caught the ear of a Midlands TV reviewer.
“I’d go as far as to say that there should be more choir-based narration in documentaries”
Jeremy Clay in the Leicester Mercury
Kinks Choral Collection
Ray Davies & Crouch End Festival Chorus - Released June 2009. Read all about it here, with reviews, profiles and a video
Profile in Choir & Organ
Read a 2009 profile celebrating Crouch End Festival Chorus’s success (PDF)
St James’s Church, Muswell Hill, 25 April 09
“The Chorus has a wonderfully gentle touch that allows it the sensitivity and grace usually associated with a much smaller ensemble.
“It was a full house sell out with at least one ugly scene on the door as a ticketless enthusiast tried to blag his way in. His efforts were rewarded as was every member of the audience gathered for this remarkable performance.
“…Sopranos Emma Kirkby and Miriam Allan … were supported with the usual passion and technical brilliance that the Chorus brings to pieces like this. … The audience left beaming and looking forward to CEFC’s next performance.”
David Winskill in the Ham & High
Barbican, 1 March 09
“Not since Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ has anyone attempted a choral and orchestral work on so audacious a scale. What might appear dense on the page has an invincible cumulative power when heard live. Matthew Ferraro’s pedigree shines through in the commanding orchestral writing’s attractive cinematic sweep. Yet what is most impressive about ‘The Tension of Opposites’ [a new work commissioned by CEFC] is Ferraro’s dramatic musical balancing of the personal and the political. Spoken texts of contrasting but complementary viewpoints ring out against triumphant choral textures to passionate effect.”
David Benedict, London Culture Critic, Variety