City Chamber Choir 30th Anniversary Concert

City Chamber Choir celebrates 30 years of music-making with a concert closely aligned to some of the choir’s key themes over the years: 20th century British music, overlooked master­pieces and the commissioning of new music. This charity concert is in support of Music for Open Ears which was founded in 2015 with the main aim of giving children who have little or no experience of classical music the opportunity to engage in a live performance by a chamber en­semble.

Music Director Stephen Jones writes: "For our 30th anniversary concert pride of place goes to Herbert Howells’ wonderful but rather neglected An English Mass dedi­cated to Harold Darke and the St Michael’s Singers, another long established City of London choir. As a young composer Howells had been inspired by the music of Vaughan Williams, whose celebrated The Lark Ascending has in its turn inspired Cecilia McDowall’s The Descending Blue. We also première Spring, a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem by our Composer in Residence Samuel Wilson."