London Oriana Choir and Dominic Ellis-Peckham |
London Oriana Choir, musical director Dominic Ellis-Peckham, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary final season, and they’re persevering with the thrill with a 2024/25 season full of fine issues. The season opens on 18 October at St Paul’s Church, Covent Backyard with Take Flight, a programme celebrating the evening sky with Cecilia McDowall’s Night time Flight (with cellist Gabriella Swallow) and Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Desires of His Flying Machine plus music by Bob Chilcott, Ben Parry and lots of extra.
Cecilia McDowall’s Night time Flight was written in 2014 to mark the centenary of Harriet Quimby’s pioneering flight throughout the English channel, setting texts by Sheila Bryer on the mysterious powers of the ocean, earth, and air. It gained the 2014 British Composer Award within the Choral class. Written in 2001, Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Desires of His Flying Machine makes use of a textual content by Whitacre’s pal and long-time collaborator Charles Anthony Silvestri which tries to think about what it could it sound like if Leonardo Da Vinci had been dreaming?
December sees the choir in Christmas carol mode with two candlelight concert events at St James’ Piccadilly with music by Sir David Willcocks, Cecilia McDowall, Errollyn Wallen and Eric Whitacre. March 2025 finds the choir performing a Baroque masterpiece, Bach’s Mass in B Minor at Holy Sepulchre, Holborn Viaduct, and in Might they carry out a programme of motets by Brahms and Bruckner at Our Most Holy Redeemer Church, Exmouth Market, and the choir then takes this programme to Padua and Venice. A packed season ends in July 2025 when they’re joined by visitors Maz O’Connor, Will Lang and Niopha Keegan for 4 Corners, people tales and sounds from the 4 corners of the Isles at Cecil Sharp Home.
Full particulars from the choir’s web site.