December
2006 December
2006 With the choir giving three Carols by Candlelight concerts in London this winter, there has never been a better opportunity to hear Vasari Singers in concert at this festive time. However, if you do manage to miss all three concerts, the good news is that in 2007 a new CD of Christmas Music will be released by the choir on the Guild Label. Watch this space for more news in the coming months.
November
2006 
This December, Vasari Singers will feature in three Carols by Candlelight concerts in London. With performances on 6th, 9th and 15th December, don't miss your chance to hear the choir perform a wonderful range of festive music from well-known, traditional carols, to fresh re-arrangements and new works by contemporary composers. Many of the works performed this winter will feature on our recently recorded CD of Christmas Music, due for release in 2007.
For more information about these forthcoming concerts, visit our concerts page.
October
2006 Be sure to check out this month's edition of Musical Opinion. Britain's oldest classical music magazine, Musical Opinion was founded in 1877, and now runs alongside its sister publication The Organ. In the current edition, a 1-page feature article details Vasari's work, including current and future recording collaborations with Signum Classics. Click here to visit our features archive and view the article.
More reviews and airplay for our new recording of Will Todd's Mass in Blue. In a review on MusicWeb International, Rob Barnett described Vasari as "one of the world's finest choirs".
Brian Kay, on his 3 for all programme on Radio 3: "...It certainly seems to me that the combination [of jazz and classical] seems to come together particularly well in this music, as Will Todd writes so well for choral voices, as well as enjoying his own playing of the piano part... ...it’s no surprise that the Mass in Blue is getting plenty of performances – cleverly written for a modest selection of instruments and just one solo soprano, with plenty of music for the choir to enjoy."
Finally, a review from the Spanish classical music site mundoclasico.com, in which Eduardo Bennaroch described the Mass in Blue as "one sexy mass!"!
October sees the choir in rehearsal for a new CD, a collection of music for Christmas, featuring the choir's favourite festive fare combined with stunning contemporary carols and irresistible close-harmony arrangements of traditional tunes. To be released on the Guild label in 2007, this will be a fantastic collection of carols and music suitable for the Christmas period, including old favourites, arrangements of classic carols, and world premiere recordings of contemporary works. Repertoire on the CD includes:
Bob Chilcott (Shepherd's Carol), Kenneth Leighton (Coventry Carol), Jonathan Rathbone (Corpus Christi Carol, Silent Night), Judith Weir (Illuminare Jerusalem), Moretn Lauridsen (O Magnum Mysterium), Nigel Short (Away in a Manger), Humphrey Clucas (Love Came Down at Christmas), Naji Hakim (Ding Dong! Merrily On High) and Ward Swingle (Christmas Song).
The CD will be recorded in November at St Jude's church, Hampstead.
September
2006 The choir is profiled in the September edition of Gig Magazine: in an interview with the editor, Paul Cutts, Jeremy Backhouse discusses our current projects, including the Mass in Blue, and future plans. Click here to visit our features archive and view the article.
On the recent broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Aled Jones summed up the credo movement of Will Todd's Mass in Blue: "Wow, I know, leaves you speechless doesn’t it! Follow that!"
Further impressive reviews have also been published including The Express and The Gramophone. Click here to read the reviews.
Tune in to BBC Radio 3's "The Choir" programme this Sunday as Aled Jones plays the Agnus Dei movement from our new CD of Will Todd's Mass In Blue. For more information about the programme, and how you can listen again for up to a week after the broadcast, click here.
July
2006 Tune in to ClassicFM's Newsnight programme on 20th September for an interview between John Brunning and Jeremy Backhouse, Vasari's musical director, as they discuss Vasari Singers' projects including the forthcoming performance and CD release of Will Todd's Mass in Blue.
June
2006 
The choir is delighted to be featured on the front cover of the St Martin-in-the-Fields Autumn season brochure. Vasari will be performing in St Martins in September with a programme titled "Radical Masses", featuring Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli, and Will Todd's Jazz Mass - Mass in Blue. The concert will also mark the launch of our new CD of the Mass in Blue and other works by Will Todd on Signum Records. For more information about the concert, please look in our concerts section.
May
2006 Jeremy Backhouse, Vasari's musical director, will be interviewed on BBC Radio 3's In Tune programme by Sean Rafferty, live on air from 6.45pm on Friday 2nd June. The programme will be streamed directly on the BBC Radio 3 website, and available to hear on Listen Again for up to a week after broadcast.
The presenter, Sean Rafferty, was voted Radio Broadcaster of the Year at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards 2004, and is himself a keen musician and singer. In Tune is BBC Radio 3's flagship early evening music programme, broadcast live and featuring interviews and live performances with musicians making the headlines.
For more information, please visit the In Tune website.
Vasari Singers, the London-based, award-winning chamber choir, will line up at St John's Smith Square, on Saturday 3rd June to give their 2nd major London concert in just 3 weeks with a performance of the spectacular Rachmaninov Vespers. Having recently performed the World Premiere of the choir's commission of Francis Pott's The Cloud of Unknowing, to great critical acclaim, as the closing concert at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music in St Pancras Church Euston, this is another opportunity to hear one of the UK's finest chamber choirs in concert.
Reviewing the Pott in The Times, Richard Morrison wrote: "One sometimes writes, hyperbolically, of a performance moving one to tears. But at the end of Francis Pott's The Cloud of Unknowing, genuine tears were shed… Jeremy Backhouse's excellent Vasari Singers performed not just accurately, but with bags of heart and soul as well. A sincere, intelligent and admirably unsensational meditation on the darkness at the heart of man, The Cloud of Unknowing deserves a concert life beyond this moving performance." (click here for the full review)
Further acclaim came from the composer Antony Le Flemming: "the musical style and dramatic range was engrossing- not since attending the first London performance of Britten's War Requiem have I been so carried away by a contemporary choral work."
Speaking about the forthcoming performance, Backhouse explains that "The Rachmaninov Vespers is regarded as one of the finest works in the choral repertoire, and Rachmaninov himself considered it one of his two best compositions. It is spectacular and demanding work for the choir to perform, stretching the traditional boundaries of choral music with Rachmaninov's use of divided voices, and the very wide range he sets for the singers - bottom B flats are a constant threat for the 2nd basses, top B flats for the 1st tenors. This is exactly the type of music that Vasari thrives on performing."
The Vasari Singers first performed this work in the fabulous setting of Canterbury Cathedral, the long acoustic perfectly suiting the wide sound of the music; more recently giving performances in November 2000 at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham, and in June 2002 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
The programme also features music by Britain's Sir John Tavener, American composers Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen, and Polish composer Henryk Gorecki.
The concert starts at 7.30pm, tickets will be priced from £10-20 with concessions, available from the box office www.sjss.org.uk or by telephone 020 7222 1061.
Don't forget that Vasari Singers has an affiliation with online sheet music retailer musicroom.com: if you wish to buy sheet music, visit their site by clicking on the banner link at the bottom of the site, and the choir will make a commission on any sales made from your visit!
Vasari's recording of Brahms's ein Deutsches Requiem, now available on the Guild label, will be reviewed on BBC Radio 3's "CD Review" programme, to be broadcast on Saturday 6th May. Tune in from between 0900-1300 to hear the review.
April 2006
The choir is rehearsing hard for the forthcoming World Premiere of our commission
The Cloud of Unknowing, by Francis Pott, to be performed on Saturday 13th May at St Pancras Church, Euston (more details in our concerts page). Click on the image to download a flyer.
During the build up to the concert, there will be features on both BBC Radio 3's The Choir, and Classic FM's Newsnight programmes. The BBC Radio 3 feature will be broadcast on Sunday 7th May, with the Classic FM feature on Tuesday 10th May. Do tune in!
The concert is also featured in Muso Magazine this month, with a competition prize draw to win two free tickets. If you fancy the chance to come to the premiere for free, track down a copy of Muso and enter!
The April edition of Choir & Organ Magazine also includes a fascinating 3-page feature on Francis Pott, which gives a great insight in to the inspiration behind some of Francis's most important works.
The Vasari Singers is pleased to announce that the choir has again been awarded a grant by the PRS Foundation to support Vasari's performance work for the forthcoming year. The award is given in recognition of Vasari's continuing programme of commissioning and performance of British contemporary music, and will allow Vasari to perform in a wide range of concerts across the UK.
The Vasari Singers is grateful to the PRS Foundation for its continuing financial support.
The choir is grateful to the RVW Trust for awarding a grant towards the choir's work in 2006 in recognition of Vasari's commissioning and premiere performances.
The choir is pleased to announce that our recent CD recording of Brahms's German Requiem is shortly to be released on Guild. Featuring the unique arrangement of setting the orchestra for 4-hands at the piano, arranged and performed by Brahms himself, this recording shows how effectively the Brahms Requiem can be performed by smaller choirs. The more intimate arrangement allows for much more of the beautiful choral writing to come through, whilst the piano accompaniment itself lends a very exciting sound.
The piano duet was performed by Jeremy Filsell and Roderick Chadwick, playing together on one Steinway Model D, with Claire Seaton and Colin Campbell providing the soprano and baritone solos.
The CD will be available on general release now and can be bought now from Guild's online store or through the choir. Reviews will be shown here when published.
February
2006The choir is looking to add to our number of available tenors for this season (2006): if you sing either 1st or 2nd tenor and would like to find out more about how to audition to join the Vasari Singers, please complete the questionnaire or contact Nicola the choir's fixer, directly by email.
Our recording of Vaughan Williams's Mass in
G Minor receives a new review in BBC Music Magazine in their Building a Library
feature with the reviewer writing "Extremely
accomplished singing moulded into a coherent and eloquent whole".
Click here for all reviews of this fantastic
CD.
During the weekend of 27th February, the choir was in the recording studio The Warehouse, near Waterloo, recording a new CD for Signum Records. Featuring the choral works of British Composer Will Todd, the disc includes a range of his smaller-scale pieces. These included the anthems Christus est Stella and Ave Maria, with the main work being his Mass in Blue. Vasari was recording with the Will Todd jazz band, featuring Will at the piano and soprano soloist Bethany Halliday.
Mass in Blue was commissioned in 2003 and received its World Premiere in July 2003 at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Set in Latin, the work follows the structure of the traditional six-movement mass and combines choir, soprano soloist and fourteen-man jazz band, weaving 12-bar blues, jazz and up-beat gospel.
Vasari's musical director, Jeremy Backhouse, says: "Will Todd is one of the outstanding composers working in Britain today. He has a true ability to write music that is both instantly appealing and musically very satisfying that appeals to a wide range of audiences. Vasari commissioned Will for our 25th Anniversary commissions in 2005 and his work, Angel Song II instantly became a favourite of the choir, critics and audiences alike. We have been determined to work more closely with Will ever since and the opportunity to record Mass in Blue was too great to miss."
The disc will be released in September 2006. More news to follow.
January
2006
During Saturday's CD Review show on BBC Radio Three, Jeremy Summerly chose the recording by Vasari Singers as his top recommendation for a CD recording of Vaughan Williams's Mass in G Minor. Here is how Jeremy summed up his choice:
"The Vasari Singers under Jeremy
Backhouse from Guild Music, my top recommendation for Vaughan Williams’s Mass
in G minor. What’s most impressive about this version is the extraordinarily
careful pacing with which Jeremy Backhouse infuses the piece. Backhouse manages
to bring the Mass to life while also leaving its deliberately archaic style
intact. The work’s clear structure is treated with consideration and respect,
but within those logical parameters there’s a subtly flexible approach to each
and every bar. Not every chord is in tune, that’s undeniable. But there
isn’t a single recording of this piece where that is the case. What you do get
from the Vasari Singers is a performance that has passion and integrity in equal
measure. And for that reason, and for its controlled joie
do vivre, it’s a recording that bears repeated listening."
Jeremy Summerly, BBC Radio Three
Mid-January sees the choir featuring on BBC TV and twice on BBC Radio 3 in the space of 7 days - on Sunday 15th January Vasari will sing on BBC One in a broadcast of Songs of Praise.
On Saturday 21st January, the choir's recording of Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor will be reviewed during BBC Radio Three's "Building A Library" feature on CD Review, compared alongside several recordings from other choirs. The programme goes out on air from 9.00am and is presented by Jeremy Summerly.
Then on Sunday 22nd January, the choir's recording of Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor will be played on "The Cowan Collection" programme, broadcast at 11.30am.
Vasari Singers, the London-based,
award-winning chamber choir, will give the World Première of the group’s 25th
anniversary commission from the acclaimed British composer Francis Pott, as the
closing concert of the 2006 London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, at St
Pancras Church, on Saturday, 13th May.
To mark the choir’s 25th
Anniversary in 2005, Vasari commissioned 10 new sacred choral works from British
Composers. In the course of a year-long programme of concerts and a CD
recording, the first 9 of these works were performed to great acclaim:
“on
current form, there is no better non-professional choir in the land” [Commissioned
composer Gabriel Jackson.]
“The Vasari Singers and Jeremy
Backhouse have few equals. For the past quarter of a century they have been a
consistently outstanding choir” [Mark Rochester, The Gramophone, Nov 2005)
The 10th commission, written by
Francis Pott, scored for tenor solo, double choir and organ, is a larger
conception which the composer has come to view as one of his most significant
works to date. Francis Pott writes:
‘Entitled The Cloud of Unknowing,
this one-hour dramatic oratorio juxtaposes texts from a rich variety of sources,
sometimes with savage irony. It voices a passionate plea for peace, forbearance
and the sanctity of life in a world overshadowed by the clash of a secular,
capitalist West with Islamic extremism. For this reason it bears an emblematic
dedication “To the memory of Margaret Hassan and all innocent lives lost in
Iraq or beyond”. The work and its inscription
acquire added resonance through a first performance given mere yards from the
scene of the tragic bus explosion which killed several Londoners last summer.’
The
Vasari Singers will be conducted by their musical director, Jeremy
Backhouse, who has directed the choir since its formation. Vasari will be
joined by the distinguished tenor James
Gilchrist. The virtuoso organ part will be played by the internationally
acclaimed artist Jeremy Filsell, with whom Vasari has forged close musical
links. Together they have recorded 7 CDs, including 2 Gramophone award-nominated
recordings of the choral works of Marcel Dupré.
Vasari’s musical director, Jeremy Backhouse, reports: “Francis has here created something quite exceptional. The canvas is huge but the various strands are woven together with a virtuoso hand. The result is a work of rare insight, powerful emotional intensity and masterfully crafted music. For the choir it is a fitting monument to the scale of ambition which we invested in our 25th Anniversary commissioning programme.”
Tickets will cost £10 and £15 and will be available from the box office in April. Watch this space.
Holst Foundation grant
Vasari Singers is delighted to announce the choir has received a grant form the Holst Foundation for support toward our 2006 programme. The choir is very grateful to the foundation for its continued support of the choir's work.
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