Recent Concerts

The Song of Songs
Saturday 28th November 2009
St James' Church, Blake Street, Barrow-in-Furness
Music spanning five centuries based on the sensual lyrics of the Song of Solomon and also including two motets in forty parts:
Tallis's Spem in alium and Striggio's Ecce beatam lucem.

Sat 27th June 2009 Midsummer Melodies
Summer Concert at St Columba's RC Church, Walney Island, Barrow - a programme of short choral, solo and instrumental pieces with readings
Starts 7.30 p.m.

1st July 2009 Serenade for Summer
Grange-over-Sands United Reformed Church.
Starts 8.15 p.m.

Saturday 9th May 2009
Mass in B minor by J S Bach
Furness Bach Choir and Holborne Players
Conductor: Anthony Milledge
Baroque orchestra led by Peter Fender

Location: St Mary's with Holy Trinity Parish Church, Church Walk, Ulverston, Cumbria

Saturday 15th November 2008
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G minor for unaccompanied double choir
George Jeffreys (17th c. English composer) :Our Blessed Saviour Cycle of
7 verse anthems for the Church's year (its first modern performance)
St Mary of Furness RC Church, Ulverston
Furness Bach Choir presented a programme of great contrasts. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958) is one of England's greatest 20th century composers, and this Mass, written in 1921, received its first liturgical performance the following year in Westminster Cathedral. This magnificent piece of music is scored for unaccompanied double choir and four solo voices from the choir, and harks back to the great polyphonic church music of the 15th and 16th centuries. It achieves a fine balance between spiritual serenity and emotional involvement, and has been described as the vocal equivalent of his famous Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams's death, so this concert was a fitting tribute to this great and well-loved English composer.
The other work could, in many ways, hardly have been more of a contrast. The composing career of George Jeffreys (1610 - 1685) spanned the English Commonwealth under Cromwell. He composed for King Charles 1 at Oxford, where he was also organist at Christ Church Cathedral, and later became a steward to the Hatton family at Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire. He was an ardent advocate of the new Italian style of music which was spreading across Europe, and he combined this in his own music with the English style of the previous generation. His very personal musical language is adventurous, quirky and eccentric. In the years up to 1662 Jeffreys composed a set of devotional anthems for 5-part choir and organ, covering some of the main festivals of the church year. This was the first performance of this set of anthems since the 17th century. Even back then, they would not have been sung as a complete cycle, so this was therefore a world premiere!

May 2008 G F Handel Samson
November 2007 Echoes of Bohemia (pieces by 17th and 18th c. Czech composers)
April 2007 Treasures of the Baroque (Vivaldi Beatus Vir, Handel, 9th Chandos Anthem, Purcell Welcome to all the Pleasures, J S Bach Mass in G minor)
December 2006 Handel's Messiah
May 2006 Leopold Mozart Mass in C Michael Haydn St Francis Mass
November 2005 Gounod St Cecilia Mass Durufl Requiem
May 2005 J Haydn Nelson Mass plus music by Mozart and Michael Haydn
November 2004 M Haydn St Theresa Mass, Mozart Requiem
June 2004 Jonathan Dove Tobias and the Angel (with English Touring Opera)
May 2004 Dvorak Mass in D, Faure's Requiem