Ian Howarth's 70th Birthday Singing Day

Today I had a long and tiring, but very enjoyable day rehearsing for and singing in an informal concert "Hope in Song" in Cambridge Road Methodist Church in King's Heath, Birmingham. 

The event was arranged to celebrate the 70th birthday of a singing friend, Ian Howarth, one of the original St. Michael's Singers of Cambridge. It was conducted by his daughter Rosie Howarth, music director of the Festival Chorus, Battersea and Ware Choral Society and several former St. Michael's Singers were in the choir.

Traffic wasn't bad, so I got to King's Heath in Birmingham in just over two hours (and only took 20 minutes longer returning in the evening).

We rehearsed from 10am 'til 1pm (with a half hour break) and then 2pm 'til 4pm with a one hour concert starting at 5pm.

Centrepiece to the programme was Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium, a motet for 40 voices arranged in 8 choirs of five parts. Written around 1570 it is a musical tour de force, as the music rotates through the different alone or in different combinations of 2 or 4 choirs, coming together for the first time at the 40th bar of the work.

Here are a few of my photos.

Fortunately I had sung most of the music on the programme before but hadn't sung the Choir 3 tenor part of the Tallis. It was quite tricky in places so I was glad I'd practised it the day before. In all, there were 43 in the choir, but were short of a singer for the baritone part in choir 7 and 4 of the choirs had 2 sopranos on the top line.

Here is a photo of us in rehearsal in our 8 choirs in an arc around our conductor Rosie, starting with Choir 1 at the left of the photo.

Can you spot me in it (and the photograph of the choir at the top of this post)?

Here is video of Stile Antico performing the piece socially distanced after 40 days of lockdown.

You can see which choirs are singing at any one time as they are highlighted. Nice one!

The other pieces in the concert took us through the ages with a range of (almost totally) unaccompanied pieces, sacred and secular, which in differing ways celebrate the joy and hope that comes from singing together.

This was the full programme with links to performances available on the internet.

• Cantate Domino              Claudio Monteverdi (1467 - 1543). I hadn't sung this before.
• Spem in Alium                Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1585)
• If Ye Love Me                 Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1585)
• Ave Verum Corpus          W.A. Mozart (1756 - 1791)
• Locus Iste                        Anton Bruckner   (1824 - 1896)
• Christus Factus Est          Anton Bruckner   (1824 - 1896)
• O Magnum Mysterium    Morton Lauridsen (1943 -). I'd wanted to sing this for a while.
• Three Motets                    C V Stanford (1852 - 1924)
• Justorum Anime
• Beati Quorum Via
• Coelos Ascendit Hodie
• Underneath the Stars        Kate Rusby (1973 -). I've heard some of Kate's music but never sung it.
• My Spirit Sang All Day   Gerald Finzi (1901 - 1956)

And as an encore we sang

• All You Need is Love      Lennon and McCartney arr. Rosie Howarth. 

A great selection of music that was fun to sing. The concert was pretty good. I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as we did performing it.

Thank-you Ian for the invite to join and Rosie for the musical direction.