Transports of Delight!

Tom Williams says:

 ‘For our summer concert this year we’re following a route we don’t usually take. We let our hair down more than normal, performing often quite an eclectic programme, which ends up with some pieces one might not necessarily associate with a choir like Leicestershire Chorale…

Over the years we’ve become better and better at delivering this change of musical pace and I know the choir have enjoyed it too, bringing a different challenge to some of the more intense classical music we perform at other points. I’ve had experience and joy in singing music that wasn’t always within my regular wheelhouse, so for this summer I decided to revisit a programme I co-crafted for another group – an a cappella vocal ensemble called Six8.

Transports of Delight is a sometimes wild and heady mix of renaissance madrigals (both English and Italian), a renaissance motet from the Franco-Flemish school; a Romantic English part song by Granville Bantock, a Schubert lied, an imaginative piece of Messiaen organ music, with some a cappella arrangements of folk songs, spirituals and pop songs too. These often very different musical moments are linked by their stories of journeying, by various means and modes of transport and to sometimes surprising and even heavenly destinations.

The evening will be led by a compere, the former West End lead singer and actor Mark Vastenavondt, quite possibly akin to the charming, rambling style of Messrs Flanders and Swann to whom the programme is in a roundabout way dedicated. We hope that, with a glass of something delicious in hand, that you’ll enjoy the journey, stopping to wonder along the way at the many jewels we offer for you to behold. Either way, it’ll certainly be memorable and an exciting departure from our normal fare……’