Sutton Coldfield Festival of Arts

• Venue: Emmanuel Church

Emmanuel Church in Birmingham Road, Wylde Green hosts a performance by the Emmanuel Choirs with a guest appearance by Sutton Trombone Choir, on Sunday July 13.

The acclaimed Emmanuel singers will be directed, as always, by Richard Mason as they perform popular choir music, sacred and secular.

Emmanuel Choir is a Boys’ church choir, who sing regular choral services on Sundays during term-time at Emmanuel Church.

The choir consists of 16 Trebles (boys aged between 7 & 15), 4 Altos, 4 Tenors and 6 Basses.

It has established a national and international reputation and the singing of the boys has been widely praised. The choir has made numerous recordings and has also undertaken regular foreign tours in recent years to America and six visits to Europe: Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands.

Past venues include Notre Dame, Cologne Cathedral, Berlin Cathedral and a number of other cathedrals, churches and concert halls.

The choir has also sung in many English cathedrals including Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s, Hereford, Gloucester, and Worcester, and as far back as 1988 has returned at least once a year to sing services at York Minster including special services to mark the Millennium and the Golden Jubilee of the Coronation of HM The Queen.

The Birmingham Post said Richard Mason directed a choir that was “an established example of the English Choir tradition”.

Emmanuel Girls’ Choir was set up in 1996 and the Choir now exists alongside Emmanuel Choir. Girls aged ten upwards form this choir and they sing some Sunday morning services and the weekday services as required. The two choirs perform together at Christmas time for such occasions as Midnight Mass, the Candlelit Carol Concerts, and the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Just occasionally they meet up for a one-off event - for example singing for a mass in Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, and at Sutton Festival Of Arts.

Sutton Trombone Choir is a group of trombonists who meet informally once a month at Wylde Green URC; all of them hail from amateur orchestras and bands across the Midlands.

The trombone, by use of alto, tenor and bass trombones, has an incredible range of more than four octaves, which is as large as a chorus of voices whilst being only a fifth or so lower in pitch.

There is a wide range of repertoire available for Trombone Choir which can demonstrate the many faces of the Trombone. Berlioz wrote in his book on orchestration: “It possesses in an eminent degree both nobleness and grandeur. It has all the deep and powerful accents of high musical poetry, from the religious, calm and imposing, to the wild clamours of the orgy”. It can “chant like a choir of priests, threaten, lament, ring a funeral knell, raise a hymn of glory, break forth into frantic cries, or sound its dread flourish to awaken the dead or doom the living….”

The Trombone Choir will play from a selection of arrangements of classical pieces from the sombre mellowness of Gabrieli and the rousing Finlandia by Sibelius, to songs by Gershwin and Bizet as well pieces written specifically for Trombone Choir.

There will also be a strawberry tea. The concert starts at 2.30pm, and admission is £5 including refreshments. To book, call 0121 355 2917 or e-mail rhm@emmanuel-choir.co.uk
Visit www.emmanuel-choir.co.uk