Holmfirth Choral Society Members' Information

updated August 12th 2017

REHEARSALS (Thursdays from August 17th onwards) are at Holmfirth Methodist Church, 7.30 as usual. New members welcome!

The next rehearsal after this will be Thursday August 17th - if you have a copy of Mendelssohn's "Elijah", please bring it along. We have forty or so copies in the society's collection.
Since it is likely that we will have a number of different editions in use, I shall use BAR NUMBERS to refer to particular places in the score. The preferred edition will be the Novello edition published years ago - not the New Novello Choral Edition (although I'm sure this will be compatible). If your copy doesn't have bars numbered, please pencil them in. The convention I shall use is:

each number in the work is separately barred starting from 1;
If one number contains more than one section, the barring continues to the end of that number
If a number starts with an incomplete bar, that doesn't count, i.e. bar number 1 is the first complete bar in the piece.

You don't need to number the whole work for the first rehearsal. The schedule for the first few rehearsals is:

August 17th: Choruses starting with No. 1 ("Help Lord"), i.e. Nos 1, 2, 3, (postpone 7), 9, 10, (postpone 11), 12b, 13b.
August 24th: Choruses starting with No. 15 ("Cast thy burden"), i.e. Nos. 15, 16, 19b, 20, (postpone 22), 23, 24, (postpone 28), 29
August 31st: Choruses starting with No. 32 ("He that shall endure"), i.e. Nos. 32, 34, (postpone 35), 38, 41, 42
September 7th: the choruses postponed previously, plus any others not covered previously.

Thus, the intention is to have sung through, and done a little work on all the choruses during the first four weeks.

As you know, we are low in numbers particularly in the tenor and bass sections - if you know of any able tenors and basses, do please invite them. This concert promises to be one of our best for years, and I'm certainly looking forward to it.

CONCERT DATES
.
THE CONCERT ON June 24th - Summer Concert with Hepworth Band, Civic Hall WAS CANCELLED (or possibly postponed until September/October, t.b.a.)
Sunday 12th November 2017 - Mendelssohn Elijah.
9th December 2017 - Handel Messiah
17th March 2018 - Orff Carmina Burana, Ramirez Misa Criolla

Dear Friends and Colleagues, the July 2017 of ‘Chorister’ , the British Choirs on the Net quarterly Newsletter, is now available online.

For those new to this mailing British Choir on the Net, www.choirs.org.uk, is a free listing of nearly 4000 choirs across the UK. Listings are both alphabetical and geographical. The site was originally set up in 1995 to help people who were relocating to a new area/town/city to find new choirs to join. Since then it has grown into so much more, but retains the UK’s largest free listing of choirs at its core.

Over the last 5-6 months I have been conducting a full audit of the listings to ensure that it is as accurate and up to date as possible. Some choirs have disappeared with choirs disbanding, merging with others or renaming themselves. Other have changed their website addresses or emails and many have moved from websites to a facebook or twitter only presence. This is the first full audit in at least 15 years so have taken some time (and I have still yet to audit the Scotland and Northern Ireland lists).

Another trend is the gradual creep of Greater London. Some choirs which have for years been listed under parts of Essex, Middlesex and Surrey have now been subsumed into London Boroughs. This to me seems a shame and somewhat Orwellian.

The result of this audit means that we have lost a lot of choirs who were initially listed - however we have also found many more choirs so in fact the number of choirs listed is greater than before the audit. For this reason many of you will be receiving this mailing for the first time.

Just as the number of choirs have increased so too has the number of email choir contacts which have been added to the mailing list. How the contact details are collected and the rules under which are used can be found at http://www.choirs.org.uk/mailings.html Many choirs do not have email contacts while other hide their contact information behind a contact ‘form’. It means that larger information such as this newsletter and discount offers do not get out to some choirs.

There is also an option to unsubscribe from mailings although it is hoped that the information that is sent out in the course of the year will be of interest to you and your choir. These subjects vary from updates on my websites, choir tours, singing workshops and updates from people like Gareth Malone.

So if you are new to the site and this mailing - welcome. I hope that you will enjoy both. The site remains basically a one man band and labour of love. Although I try to post updates to the website as soon as I can, there may occasionally be delays. For instance in the first two weeks of August I will be performing at the InterCeltique Festival in Lorient with the Abertillery Orpheus Male Choir so that no website updates will be possible during that time.

I would also like to drawn you attention to Concertfinder www.concertfinder.co.uk This is another free listing – this time for choral concerts – so if your choir is putting on a choral concert please email me the details including the date in the format shown on the Concertfinder website and I will list it as soon as possible. This is free adverting and is used by the BBC and other organisations to find details of what’s on.

The other site you may find of interest is the facebook Group ‘British Choirs on the Net Choral Conductors Forum’ This can be read by anyone although you need to register to post on this site. https://www.facebook.com/groups/britishchoirs/

British Choirs on the Net is a member of the Singing Network UK and an associate member of the Association of British Choral Directors (ABCD)