Horsham Chamber Choir presents The Strange and the Exotic
Join Horsham Chamber Choir on Saturday 20th June for a musical mystery tour through centuries of choral music that celebrates The Strange and The Exotic, from distant mythical lands to tanks of piranha fish under your train seat!
The choir’s Musical Director, Penelope Jane Homer, says: “Composers have always enjoyed the weird and wonderful, and here we travel from Renaissance cosmography to modern urban surrealism. Well-known names sit alongside new favourites to be discovered and invoke a sense of awe and wonder at the strange new worlds music allows us to explore”
The programme opens with its earliest composition - Thomas Weelkes’s stunning madrigal Thule, the Period of Cosmography and The Andalusian Merchant. This is a Renaissance masterpiece drawing on real and mythical locations to express the wonders of exploration and our own emotional responses to the new and unfamiliar, a theme that unfolds over the course of the evening.
The title of the concert is taken from Thea Musgrave’s striking On the Underground Set 2, which transforms the familiar setting of the London Tube into a realm of surreal encounters (not least with piranhas!), dreamlike visions and unexpected humour. Vaughan Williams’s much-loved Three Shakespeare Songs offer a different kind of enchantment, using The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to conjure up images of transformations, airy spirits and the supernatural world of fairies.
Complementing these pieces are additional works by Brahms, de Lassus and Elgar chosen for their imaginative style and evocative power.
Horsham Chamber Choir will present this thought-provoking programme in the beautiful surroundings of St Mary’s Church in the Causeway. Early bird tickets can be obtained from the Horsham Chamber Choir website at www.horsham-chamberchoir.org.uk and full price tickets will also be available at the door. The concert will begin at 7.30pm.
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