Our first ever 'Carols by Candlelight'
| Type of post: | Choir news item |
| Sub-type: | No sub-type |
| Posted By: | Michael Wood |
| Status: | Current |
| Date Posted: | Mon, 6 Jan 2025 |
2024 saw the Borders Chamber Choir complete our first ever full year of music-making together; and to finish off that year and to kick off Advent, we turned down the lights in Melrose Parish Church and invited a packed audience to join us for an atmospheric concert of much-loved Christmas classics and lesser-known carols by candlelight.
We were delighted to team up with Scotland’s premier female organist, Imogen Morgan (Assistant Master of the Music, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh), and members of the Dalkeith and Monkton Hall Brass Band to present a wide, varied, cohesive, and simply magnificent programme of Christmas music in the magical surroundings of a candlelit church.
The weather certainly wasn't in our favour, but our spirits certainly weren't dampened when we saw the sheer number of people who turned out to hear us sing. We were over the moon to present so many people with an evening of music that included something for everyone while perfectly encapsulating the breadth of what so many of us love about festive music. Alongside beautifully florid pieces from the Renaissance, and big, brassy expressions of joy from the Baroque (featuring a version of ‘In dulci jubilo’ from well before Mike Oldfield got his hands on it!), we sang popular twentieth-century Christmas classics (by Head, Howells, Warlock, and Leighton) that regularly feature on radio and at services of Nine Lessons and Carols. And to top it all off, our eager audience demonstrated that they, too, could compete with the brass when they sang with us for 'Hark! the Herald Angel Sing' and 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' at the end. Perhaps the promise of mulled wine and mince pies, served up in the hall afterwards, was inducement enough for our audience to demonstrate their skills!
Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed this year's concert, and Artistic Director Robert Marshall is already hard at work devising another excellent programme for next year's concert. Before then, we've got Bach's St Matthew Passion (19 April) and a concert of Music for a Summer's Eve (21 June) to work on, so please do join us for those. In the meantime, however, thank you for making our first ever Carols by Candlelight so special. We hope it was a fitting way to kick off the Christmas season! And please put next year's Carols by Candlelight on Saturday, 6 December in the diary!
We were delighted to team up with Scotland’s premier female organist, Imogen Morgan (Assistant Master of the Music, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh), and members of the Dalkeith and Monkton Hall Brass Band to present a wide, varied, cohesive, and simply magnificent programme of Christmas music in the magical surroundings of a candlelit church.
The weather certainly wasn't in our favour, but our spirits certainly weren't dampened when we saw the sheer number of people who turned out to hear us sing. We were over the moon to present so many people with an evening of music that included something for everyone while perfectly encapsulating the breadth of what so many of us love about festive music. Alongside beautifully florid pieces from the Renaissance, and big, brassy expressions of joy from the Baroque (featuring a version of ‘In dulci jubilo’ from well before Mike Oldfield got his hands on it!), we sang popular twentieth-century Christmas classics (by Head, Howells, Warlock, and Leighton) that regularly feature on radio and at services of Nine Lessons and Carols. And to top it all off, our eager audience demonstrated that they, too, could compete with the brass when they sang with us for 'Hark! the Herald Angel Sing' and 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' at the end. Perhaps the promise of mulled wine and mince pies, served up in the hall afterwards, was inducement enough for our audience to demonstrate their skills!
Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed this year's concert, and Artistic Director Robert Marshall is already hard at work devising another excellent programme for next year's concert. Before then, we've got Bach's St Matthew Passion (19 April) and a concert of Music for a Summer's Eve (21 June) to work on, so please do join us for those. In the meantime, however, thank you for making our first ever Carols by Candlelight so special. We hope it was a fitting way to kick off the Christmas season! And please put next year's Carols by Candlelight on Saturday, 6 December in the diary!
