2013 was a busy year!
The Greenstede Singers won a trophy at the East Grinstead Music Festival and sang a May concert at the Peredur Arts Centre. They teamed up with Choirpower for a Christmas concert  at Chequermead Arts Centre. they sang a very successful concert in Dormansland Parish Church, which raised over £1200 for Action Medical Research. We were delighted to welcome harpist, Lizzie Peacock, as our soloist for the latter concert.
We rounded the year off with carols at Standen - the hot drinks and mince pies were great!!

Choirpower sang a very successful (if very hot!) summer concert at Chequermead. In the autumn we joined up with other artists in Eastbourne, raisng money for the local theatre. We ended the term in style at Chequermead, with a Christmas concert, while supporting local Mayoral and Rotary Club charities with carol singing in the High Street and Meridian Hall.

Congratulations to all last year's exam students! 100% pass rate on all practical and theory exams.
Both Grade 8 ABRSM singers passed with Merit grades.
All 9 Music theatre candidates passed with Distinction, including two Grade 8's.

We are looking forward to Choirpower's Easter Concert on April 5th at Peredur Arts Centre. Easter eggs and Easter bonnets to the fore!
The Greenstede singers will be presenting a programme of partsongs for the Siroptimist Society on May 10th in Trinity Methodist church. All welcome.

Music is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing’ – wise words from one of our great Elizabethan composers over 400 years ago.

Why is it so good a thing? We know of its health-giving effects - using the full stretch of the lungs, oxygenating the system, improving posture, stimulating the brain.

We also know of the life enhancing  effect of meeting with other people, enjoying the social interaction of life in a choir.

William Byrd grew up in an age where singing was part of your everyday entertainment. After dinner, the part books would be brought out and distributed amongst the guests or family members and each would sing their part in the madrigals or partsongs of the day. If you were lucky enough to have a lutenist or viol (predecessor to the violin)player among your company, they would just join in and all would sing and play together. We think of it now as a golden age of music and art and we have a wealth of material from that time still being sung today by choirs and groups across the world.

In our own day, we are experiencing a resurgence of interest in choirs and singing, through our TV channels. Choral singing is again becoming a national sport!

For the lucky few, having a beautiful voice and winning a talent show can be the fast-track doorway to untold fame and riches.

For many people, taking the time to exercise and train the voice can lead to a lifetime of pleasure singing in the many amateur, semi-professional and professional choirs that we have here in the UK.

The pleasures are many. There is the sheer delight of finding you have and can use a voice, feeling it grow and strengthen as you use it more and more.

There is the pleasure of setting a target, working for it and attaining it in performance.

And of course everyone loves applause and admiration.

It can be a welcome break from the working day. It’s not hard to find a city choir meeting at lunchtimes for hardworking business men to relax and enjoy.

We have all enjoyed listening to those lovely Welsh Male Voice Choirs, many of whose members spent their working day far underground, digging coal. What a joy and relief singing must have been to them.

But for me, the most rewarding thing about getting people together to sing is that it is a great ‘leveller’.

Looking along the lines of singers you will find Bank Managers next to bricklayers, surgeons and shop assistants, high flying sales people and busy stay-at-home mothers. There is no thought as to what religious or political beliefs you hold. Noone cares how big your bank balance is or whether you go home to a bed-sit or a mansion.

You are there, as a group to make beautiful music – and in doing so, you, and the audience sharing the musical experience, are uplifted, out of a world of friction and dissent to a world of pure beauty.

To me that is the main message behind the words of William Byrd, a man who knew well the social, religious and political difficulties of his day and yet survived them all  - due in no small part, I am sure , to the power of his music and getting people together to sing.

 

The Greenstede Singers have been busy this Summer preparing for a performance of Purcell's Birthday Ode for Queen Mary (1694)on October 28th. The choice of work was inspired by the text 'in honour of the Jubilee', which seems to fit in to our current UK festive mode.
We will be joined by the Martin Sonneveld Orchestra for the occasion.
The choir will also be singing some madrigals and some more up-to-date partsongs by Alan Bullard and Philip Lane.
Marion Shuster will conduct the performance.
The venue is the Peredur Centre for the Arts, West Hoathly Road, East Grinstead. the concert starts at 4.00pm. Tickets available from 
(01342)312 824 or Bullfrog Music in Ship Street. (£8, £6 concessions including refreshments)

We very much enjoyed singing in June at the Felbridge Country Fair - a very jolly occasion with lots of creative stalls and fun games. 

Look out for us on December 1st, as the Rotary club will switch on the lights on their Xmas tree in the East Grinstead High Street. We will be there singing some carols to cheer them on.
We will also be in the East Grinstead library on December 15th, singing carols to help them celebrate their special day 'A Taste of Christmas' - linking in with the town's Wencelas week celebrations.

Do come and join us on on December 8th, when the Greenstede singers and the Singing Circle will be hosting a Christmas Tea and Carols Concert at the Peredur Centre for the Arts, West Hoathly Road, East Grinstead. The concert will start at 4.00 and will include plenty of opportunity for audience to get into a festive mood and join in with the carols. Tickets £8, £6 concessions including Christmas tea with home-made cake)


Music Studio News: Belated congratulations to my Summer exam students! All passed with Merit or Distinction - well done.

Our Summer Students' concert at the Peredur Centre for the Arts was very well received by an appreciative audience. We now have a long tradition of such events and it is really nice to see students' confidence and performance skills developing. As usual we had a wide range of experience, but everyone produced high level performances, not least those students performing for the first time in front of an audience.    

exam success

Congratulations to all the students who took exams in the Spring session. All students passed with high marks. The Music Theatre candidates all achieved Distinction.
Tips for exam success - choose your songs early, and get the memorising done. Then you can concentrate on really producing a tip-top performance. Plan your costumes and props well in advance.
I recommend The Pocket guide to Musicals by Maureen Hughes - you can research the information easily for your discussion with the examiner.

Greenstede Singers success

The Greenstede Singers enjoyed taking part in the East Grinstead Music and Arts Festival in March. We were proud to take home the Terence Kennedy Shield and lovely comments from the adjudicator. "A smart and musical choir - colorful in sound and vision"

At the end of March we  sang in a charity concert organised by the local Soroptimists, which raised £1500!
Our mix of classical, folk and popular songs was much appreciated by the audience.

We have two upcoming Jubilee dates -

Felbridge Country (Jubilee) Fair June 16th
Jubilee Celebration concert featuring Purcell's Come Ye sons of Art (Birthday Ode for Queen Mary 1694) -October 28th at the Peredur Centre for Arts, dunnings road, East Grinstead .

Greenstede singers will be spreading Christmas cheer on December 4th

Look out for a merry band of singers during the afternoon of Sunday, December 4th in East Grinstead. To help raise the Christmas spirit for the Town Family Day and all day shopping, the Greenstede Singers will be visiting shops and singing traditional carols. Look out for a few surprises!

Greenstede Singers concert, Peredur Arts Centre October 1st

The Greenstede Singers gave their inaugural concert last Saturday at the Peredur Arts Centre in East Grinstead to a delighted audience. The concert included modern arrangements of traditional folk songs such as My Boy Billy, Pretty Pollie Pillicoate, Eriskay Lovelilt, The Ash Grove and settings of well-known poems - Five Eyes, To Daffodils, It was a Lover and his Lass and Linden Lea.
There were delightful solos from Glynda Rendell and Marion and daughter, Kathleen.
One of the favourite items of the evening, raising a cheer from the audience, was the Nun's chorus from the operetta 'Casanova'. Another favourite was Bob Chilcott's haunting setting of an anonymous 16C poem - the Lily and the Rose.
The concert ended in more popular style, with Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', Bernstein's 'I Feel Pretty' and Bob Dylan's 'To Make You Feel My Love'.
Money raised from the sale of raffle tickets was donated to the East Grinstead Christmas Lights. Chairman, Melvyn Phillips, said that this support from the community was much appreciated.