From our Musical Director
Just last Saturday I conducted one of the most gorgeous concerts in my career - beautiful performers, beautiful space, beautiful music, beautiful audience, and absolutely beautiful performance by everyone, that I'm super proud of!
It's been over a year now that I've been working with my lovely Shoreham Oratorio Choir - the most wonderful group of people who are not professional singers, but enjoy being pushed to a professional standard, and are very enthusiastic, appreciative and welcoming.
This term they've been keen to do two concerts in one term, which for most amateur groups is quite a stretch, but they were keen to sing some Fauré and raise funds for the gorgeous St Mary de Haura church, which is our second home.
We therefore put together a little Fauré-themed Remembrance concert, and oh my goodness, how they embraced the challenge of polishing the details, and how they raised the roof in moments like the famous 'Libera Me'! 🤩
Added to that, it's been absolutely touching to have the lovely Rose Rands always keen to come back to work with us, finding SOC the most welcoming group, and particularly to have a very dear friend André Batalha Soares happy to fly all the way from Portugal just to sing in this one concert!
Last but not least, it was also so so lovely to have a whole group of close friends in the audience, even though it's an hour-long drive down to Shoreham, and choral music might not be their chosen cup of tea - yet the fact that they all loved the concert also speaks to the quality of the performance 😇
Obviously, every conductor wants to work with the top professionals who can immediately execute whatever you ask of them, often without you even needing to ask.
However, I would argue that it's hard for that to compete with how rewarding it can be when you work on something not easy, with a group of non-professionals who might think at the start they won't be able to do it and yet they enjoy the rehearsing process and really push themselves to achieve something really quite professional in sound!
SOC, you have my heart 💖
Shoreham Oratorio Choir: Remembrance Concert of Music by Gabriel Fauré including the Cantique de Jean Racine and Faure's iconic Requiem, Sat November 8th (Remebrance Weekend), at St Mary De Haura, Shoreham By Sea