Our Summer concert on 21st June in St Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico celebrates two anniversaries, marks the end of a superb collaboration and reminds us of a wonderful weekend’s music-making in Northumberland early in May.

The title of the concert is that of one of the two Thomas Hardy poems set by the JCS composer-in-association Zoe Dixon, whose skilful and subtle word-setting has provided the choir with several fine choral works marking the different seasons as portrayed in the words of Christina Rossetti, Wordsworth and Keats as well as Hardy.  We shall perform all of these alongside the first performance of the two Hardy Songs and the anthem she wrote for our 2022 Gala Concert. Over the years, the JCS has given over forty ‘first performances’, but it has been particularly pleasing to have had a young composer writing regularly and specifically for the choir and giving her the opportunity to hear her work come to life. We are very grateful for the financial support of an anonymous friend of the JCS that enabled this fruitful association to take place.

Two notable composers who have significant anniversaries this year also feature in our programme – marking the 150^th of the birth of Gustav Holst and the centenary of the death of Charles Villiers Stanford, both huge figures in the British musical world at the transition from the 19^th to the 20^th Centuries. The Irish-born Stanford is represented by some familiar motets and partsongs, and Holst by some of his folksong settings – all superbly crafted miniatures by composers whose output was extraordinarily wide-ranging.

We also mark the close friendship that Holst had with a remarkable figure in the musical world of both Northumberland and Scotland, W G Whittaker. The two corresponded regularly from 1913, when they shared a walking holiday in the Cheviots with Vaughan Williams, until Holst’s death in 1934. The JCS visit to North Northumberland earlier this year persuaded us to explore some of the folksong arrangements Whittaker made, adding two by a contemporary Northumbrian composer, Derek Hobbs.

More details and ticketing  information are on our Performances page. Do join us!