TENEBRAE ASSOCIATE ARTISTS: WORKSHOP AND CONCERT

Led by Artistic Director Nigel Short, the Tenebrae Associate Artists programme provides young professional singers with invaluable training, mentoring, performance and pedagogical opportunities. Now regular visitors to Repton, they provide an opportunity not only to hear some exciting new voices but also to perform alongside them.

This year’s workshop, in February, began with a vocal warm-up led by soprano Rachel Haworth and baritone Joseph Edwards, in which we used a new technique of incorporating movement and body percussion into our singing. We were then privileged to be directed by Nigel Short himself, one of the UK’s foremost choral conductors, who took us through material that we were preparing for the Rome tour and for the evening’s concert.

The concert took place in our beautiful Chapel, which was the ideal setting for the mixture of religious and secular music. The Tenebrae singers showed us all how should be done with rich, warm madrigals by Bennet, Gibbons and Tallis, gloriously uplifting Byrd and the secret, introspective beauty of his ‘Gloria’; and some wonderfully lyrical pieces by Chilcott – best known to Reptonians to us through his arrangement of ‘Dear Lord and Father ’. Their amazing voices soared and filled the Chapel space, especially the extraordinary vocal gymnastics from the sopranos and altos in Britten’s ‘Dances from Gloriana’.

Being able to perform on the same bill as the Tenebrae singers was an incredible experience, especially standing with them in the Choir stalls and singing together in our joint piece. And it was good too to practise our Rome repertoire in front of such experts and a supportive audience.

The evening concluded with Repton’s very own Reptiles, who performed ‘May It Be’ (their piece for the final of the Barnado’s Choir Competition), and then the Tenebrae artists sent us off with a smile on our faces with their witty and entertaining ‘L’habitante de Saint Barbe’.

It was a concert which we all enjoyed both as audience and performers. Thank you, Mr Walker, for creating this fantastic opportunity for the Choir.