Category Archives: Birmingham Festival Choral Society

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Join a choir!

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Singing in a choir brings many benefits for body and mind, as Birmingham Festival Choral Society singers will confirm. We all look forward to singing on a Wednesday evening – and the feeling after giving a concert is tremendous! Added to that, it’s a great place to make friends, through sharing Wednesday rehearsals, weekend workshops and tours abroad.

Would you like to give us a try? Come along to our Open Rehearsal on Wednesday 6th September, where you will find a friendly welcome. If you come at 7pm there will be enough time to meet you and introduce you to a singing buddy who can guide you through the rehearsal. This is a ‘taster session’ to see if you feel this is the choir for you – there is no obligation.

If you’re not able to make it to the Open Rehearsal, you will still be welcome at any of our other Wednesday rehearsals.

Click to find out more about joining our choir.

Watch our video to see why we love Birmingham Festival Choral Society!

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The Birmingham Festival Choral Society Oratorio Competition.

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The first Birmingham Festival Choral Society Oratorio Competition, in association with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, was held on Monday 24th October. The audience was treated to a very high standard of singing from the shortlisted finalists: Ellen Smith, Matilda Wale, Noémie Johns, Julia Morgan, Abigail Baylis, Polly Clarke and Jia Huang.

Judges David Wynne (Music Director of BFCS) and Kevin Gill (BFCS accompanist) awarded the trophy to baritone Jia Huang, after his impressive performance of two Handel works: Revenge, Timotheus cries and Honour and arms.

Jia Huang was presented with the Birmingham Festival Choral Society Oratorio Trophy by David Fletcher, Chair of BFCS. As well as the trophy, Jia has won a financial prize and a future engagement singing with Birmingham Festival Choral Society.

Jia is pictured here with his accompanist, Guang Feng, and Paul Wingfield, the Head of the Vocal Department at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Runners up in the competition were Julia Morgan (2nd place) and Ellen Smith (3rd place), pictured here with the judges:

The judges with Julia Morgan 2nd place.

The judges with Ellen Smith, 3rd place.

Birmingham Festival Choral Society is proud to support young talent, and we wish great success to all the finalists in their future careers.

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Why we love Birmingham Festival Choral Society – video

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BFCS stands for Birmingham Festival Choral Society – but we are also known as the Big Friendly Choral Society! We aim for a high standard of singing within a friendly environment.

This video, put together by the talented Kyle Simms, shows you some of the things that we love about BFCS:

New singers are welcome at any time, but we particularly invite you to our Open Rehearsal on Wednesday 7th September.

For more detail, please click on our Join Our Choir page.

To see the type of music we sing, please click on our our Concerts page.

Click on our Overseas Tours page to read about past and future choir tours.

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Singing in Lichfield Cathedral

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Birmingham Festival Choral Society will be travelling to the historic city of Lichfield on 2nd July to give its first concert in the magnificent cathedral.

We hope that you will be able to join us for this special occasion.

        Brahms: A German Requiem

        Finzi: Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice

        Brahms: Hungarian Dances no 5 and 8 (piano duet)

        Brahms – Geistliches Lied Op. 30

        Click Here for tickets

        Birmingham Festival Choral Society

        Conductor: David Wynne

        Soprano: Louise Wayman

        Baritone: James Davies

        Accompanists: Kevin Gill and Stephen Hargreaves

        Saturday 2nd July, 7.30pm

        Lichfield Cathedral WS13 7LD

        Our soloists: James Davies, Baritone, and Louise Wayman, Soprano.

        James Davies
        Louise Wayman

        Our accompanists: Stephen Hargreaves (piano) and Kevin Gill (piano and organ)

        Stephen Hargreaves
        Kevin Gill
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          Will Todd Workshop

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          We’re delighted that Will Todd is coming to our choir workshop on Sunday. We’ll be rehearsing ‘Passion Music’ and ‘Mass in Blue’ , and it will be a real treat to hear insights from the composer of these wonderful pieces. They are challenging to learn, but it’s so rewarding to sing those complex rhythms and gorgeous blues harmonies.

          In this 25 minute video, Will Todd gives us an insight into choosing the words for ‘Passion music’ and setting them to music. His fusion of choral, jazz and blues styles brings out the meaning of the story of Christ’s passion with spiritual sensitivity.

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          BFCS performs live again!

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          Our Rossini concert on 30th October was a great occasion. It was wonderful to be performing live again – the first concert for 2 years.

          Our concert in the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, Birmingham.

          BFCS had been ready to perform Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle in March 2020 when the pandemic caused the cancellation of the concert. We’ve been keeping it going during our Zoom rehearsals, so it was very well prepared! It was really enjoyable to sing it with such talented professionals – our soloists, Mimi Doulton, Rachel Gilmore, Ed Harrisson and Joe Kennedy, our accompanists, Ben de Souza and Kevin Gill, and our conductor, David Wynne. We were also very pleased to see so many of our friends and family in the audience.

          Thank you to Alfred White for these lovely photos – a great souvenir of a wonderful evening.

          Joe Kennedy (bass), Ed Harrisson (tenor),
          Rachel Gilmore (mezzo), Mimi Doulton (soprano)
          Ben de Souza (accordion), Kevin Gill (piano).
          David Wynne (conductor).

          Birmingham Festival Choral Society singers. Click the arrows to see all four photos.

          Our loyal audience.

          Birmingham Choirs, Birmingham Festival Choral Society, choir, Choirs in Birmingham, Choral, choral society, Music Performance, news, Virtual choir

          BFCS virtual double choir sings Rheinberger’s Kyrie.

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          Click above to listen to BFCS singing Rheinberger’s Kyrie .

          We hope that you will enjoy listening to the beautiful Kyrie by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, sung by the Birmingham Festival Choral Society virtual double choir.

          The Kyrie is the first movement of Rheinberger’s most famous choral work, the Mass for double choir in E flat, (Cantus Missae) Op 109. Written in 1878, it recalls the old compositional style of alternating unaccompanied choirs , as used in late Renaissance Venice. Listening through stereo headphones is the best way to appreciate the full double choir effect .

          Music Director: David Wynne

          Rehearsal accompanist: Kevin Gill

          Video Editor: Michael Cullen

          Audio Editor: Gareth Howell

          View from the lantern, Ely Cathedral.
          Birmingham Choirs, Birmingham Festival Choral Society, Choral, Faure, news, singing, Virtual choir

          Virtual BFCS sings Faure’s Cantique

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          Birmingham Festival Choral Society is pleased to present our recording of the beautiful ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, by Gabriel Faure.

          This composition won the 19 year old Faure first prize in a competition at his school of Church music in Paris, in 1865. The French text, “Verbe égal au Très-Haut” (Word, one with the Highest), was written by Jean Racine in 1688.

          We hope that you will enjoy the Paris connection through images of the medieval stained glass in Sainte Chapelle.

          This virtual performance was put together by Gareth Howell, using individual recordings sent from home by our singers. We look forward to a time when the pandemic is over and we can sing together in real life.

          Wikipedia photo credits: Sam67Fr, Javi Masa, Oldmanisold, Grunt XIII.

          Birmingham Choirs, Birmingham Festival Choral Society, choir, Choirs in Birmingham, Choral, choral society, news, singing, Virtual choir

          Our first virtual performance !

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          We hope that you will enjoy our performance of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, recorded individually in our own homes, and brought together with some digital magic.

          Click the symbol in the bottom right corner to make the video fill the full screen.

          Our last concert was in November, when we sang Handel’s Messiah to a packed audience in St Alban’s Church. The beginning of the concert was delayed while our front of house team ran around trying to find extra chairs and spaces to fit in the people who were still arriving. Who could imagine that now!

          We had great plans for 2020, our 175th Anniversary, but the Covid-19 Pandemic put an end to all of that. But nothing will stop Birmingham Festival Choral Society singing, so we are proud to present our first Virtual Choir Performance to you.

          Many thanks to David Wynne for leading us through this process, to Kevin Gill the accompanist, the BFCS singers who overcame the technological obstacles to make their recordings, and to Gareth Howell for putting it all together.

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          Anniversaries and premieres.

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          Birmingham Festival Choral Society celebrates its 175th anniversary this year! Our choir was formed to provide the chorus for the Birmingham Triennial Festivals (hence the ‘Festival’ in our name), and gave its first concert in 1845. It sang at all the Triennial Festivals until they came to an end in 1912.

          One of the highlights of singing in the Festivals was the premiere of Elijah in 1846, conducted by Mendelssohn himself in the new Birmingham Town Hall. The audience loved the work, and it is still much loved by choral societies and audiences today.

          Birmingham Town Hall 1834

          Click here for a newly published account of the premiere of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, written by Robert Hugill in his Classical Music Blog. The premiere of Elijah also features in this recent blog from the Library of Birmingham’s Music Librarian, as well as the information about another of the premieres from the Festivals – Elgar’s Dream of Gerontious. Both of these works are now firmly established in the choral repertoire.