The Sussex Occasional Singers return to Highbrook Church for a virtuoso Concert of Timeless Musical Shades - Autumn Colours. In an exciting and superbly varied programme, this concert includes the world premiers of works written by the Director.
With an array of local talent and seasoned professionals on show, Sussex Occasional Singers present their fourth Autumn Colours concert in All Saints, Highbrook on Saturday, October 12th, 2019 at 7:30.
The programme includes Bach's Cantata 140, Wachet auf, featuring Mark Beesley and Helen Underwood-Lewis, Handel's Anthem Zadok the Priest, and Simon Austin's The Third Millenium, to a text by Nick Nye, which is a response to the 9/11 antrocities, all accompanied by Autumnal Strings led by George Clifford (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment).
Sussex Occasional Singers has grown out of The Sussex Cantorum, which was a chamber choir active from 1992 until 2016 famed for the performance of a wide vocal repertoire ranging from baroque and early music through to 20th and 21st century English compositions. Cantorum have given world premieres of works by local composers including their founder and director, Simon Austin, notably in collaborations with the highly gifted writer, Nick Nye.
There are two first performances tonight, new works by Simon Austin, : His end was...for solo flute, played by Ivor Humphreys, who commissioned the piece, and Summoned, for soprano (Helen Underwood-Lewis) and strings.
The choir will sing two a capella works, The Coolin by Samuel Barber, and an arrangement by Simon Austin of the Spiritual Soon ah will be done...
The oboist Helen Pye will feature in Handel's The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, the harpist Anna Wynne will play a solo and in the orchestra, and Mark Beesley has promised ingenious arrangements of two Schubert songs.
There will be a retiring collection to support St Catherine's Hospice, Crawley.