St Mary's Music News June 2024
At Choral Evensong on 14 April, James and William were formally commissioned as Choral Scholars. Congratulations to them both. At the next Choral Evensong on 12 May the choir will (or will have, by the time you read this newsletter) reprise Kerry Andrew’s haunting Lux aeterna, and then on 30 May they are supporting Choral Eucharist for Corpus Christi.
The AGM on 21 April was attended by 24 members of the SMMA. The draft Minutes will be available on the St Mary’s website in due course. Meanwhile, we were pleased to hear that the Association’s finances are sound, boosted by generous donations, by the 3 extremely successful concert series (spring, summer and autumn), and by Anna Lapwood’s very popular organ concert. These funds are used to pay for a range of activities and benefits including the Junior Choir’s trips, new music and new equipment. Steve Cass, Peter De Vile and Philip Sunderland were all elected to the Committee for a further term.
The St Mary’s organ is, as is increasingly obvious in services, nearing the end of its present life, despite the constant skilled attention of Peter De Vile. The SMMA, with the PCC, is exploring how best to proceed, and to this end a Listening Exercise was undertaken on 26 April. This involved the choir singing the same 3 verses of “Rejoice the Lord is King” from various parts of the church, while the organ, or recordings of the organ, were also played from different locations. A panel of listeners, drawn from the congregation and the choir, completed questionnaires about what they heard from their pews. The results of this exercise are being compiled into a report which will inform an update to the Statement of Needs.
June will be a very busy month musically, and not only with regular Choral Evensong on 9 June. More secular events start at 6pm on 1 June with a concert by international organist Jonathan Scott who has an impressive 70 million views on his Scott Brother Duo YouTube channel. This will be followed on Saturday 15 June by an opportunity to Come and Sing Dido & Aeneas at the United Reformed Church. Details will be announced shortly on the St Mary’s website. Then of course St Mary’s musicians will be participating at a range of venues in Saffron Walden’s Fete de la Musique on Saturday 23 June, including with a selection of organ music in church, and finally Oli King and Martin Huggett will be providing A Musical Entertainment at 3pm on Saturday 29 June.
Meanwhile, the popular lunchtime concerts at St Mary’s begin on 5 June with the Mitchison Ensemble, followed on 12 June by Joanna Lam on piano, then on 19 June a violin and piano concert by Krassimira Jeliazkova and Elizabeth Mucha, and on 26 June a performance by flautist James Cairns. The schedule continues into July. All these concerts start at 1.10pm, and last around 40 minutes. Refreshments are available from, 12.30pm.
And finally, something completely different. Our congratulations go to soprano Lizzie Bennett who represented Great Britain at the inaugural international equestrian para-vaulting championships in Saumur at Easter, and came first in her class.
Ottilie Lefever