Bella Cora & Winchmore String Orchestra: Concert in aid of Cancer Research UK

CONDUCTORS: ROSAMOND SAVOURNIN, MICHAEL COLEBY
LEADER: Chris Gundry

• Vivaldi: Kyrie RV 587
• Mozart: Divertimento in F
• Dag Wiren: Serenade for Strings

as well as music by Kate Bush, Irvine Berlin, Jerome Kern, Jean Sibelius and others

Tickets £10 Children under 12 admitted free if accompanied by an adult.

Contacts for tickets:

• Bella Cora: Lynnette Gomme 07809 255289
• WSO: Celia Desmond 07714 611934

It’s a bit like one of those fantasy dinner parties where you draw up a guest list of famous people who could never have all met in real life. Kate Bush rubbing shoulders with Mozart. Vivaldi hobnobbing with Irving Berlin. Sibelius in festive mood, joking with John Lennon. Except they won’t be sitting around a table. They will be sharing the platform at our summer concert, in which we will be joined by the Enfield-based chamber choir Bella Cora.

As a string orchestra the WSO mostly plays the mainstream classical repertoire, but Bella Cora, who started life as a madrigal choir at Winchmore School in 1976, spreads its net more widely. “We like singing serious choral repertoire, and especially music intended to be performed by upper voice choirs,” says Bella Cora’s secretary, Hilary Biggs. “We also love jazz and pop, and choral singing in these idioms has grown hugely in popularity, with an explosion of arrangements for choirs. The upcoming concert contains some of our favourites.”

The main works which the WSO will perform alone will be the Andante festivo by SIBELIUS, one of his last pieces, which was played at his funeral; the Divertimento in F by MOZART, one of a set of three teenage works sometimes known as the “Salzburg symphonies”; and the ever-popular Serenade by the Swedish composer DAG WIRÉN, the jaunty “march” movement of which provided the signature tune for the BBC TV arts programme Monitor in the 50s and 60s.

Bella Cora will open the concert, a cappella, with Adoremus in Aeternum, written for upper voices by the contemporary Latvian composer ĒRIKS EŠENWALDS. The other pieces they will perform alone, also mostly a cappella, are drawn largely from film scores and popular music of the 20^th century: What’ll I do? by IRVING BERLIN; The way you look tonight by JEROME KERN (from the film Show Time starring Fred Astaire); Bring me little water, Silvy, written by the folk musician LEAD BELLY; the Beatles’ Blackbird, written by JOHN LENNON and PAUL MCCARTNEY; and Top of the World, the 1972 hit by the CARPENTERS.

The orchestra and choir will join forces, however, for Cloudbusting by KATE BUSH and For You by the singer/songwriter JUDIE TZUKE (arranged by Bella Cora’s conductor Rosamond Savournin). They will also combine for the Kyrie (RV 587) by VIVALDI and will together bring the concert to an end with a setting by the composer WILL TODD of Psalm 23, The Lord’s my Shepherd.

So whether you favour strings or vocal chords - or like both equally - we hope you will join us.

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