STEVENAGE CHORAL SOCIETY
About the Choir
Stevenage Choral Society is a mixed voice choir with around 90 members of all ages and abilities. No audition is necessary to join our choir and we welcome anyone who wants to sing to come along and "give it a try". We pride ourselves on a varied and interesting musical repertoire. For an idea of the general style of music we perform, see below or view our previous concert history [click here].
We perform with both amateur and professional soloists and use amateur and professional orchestras and bands for accompaniment. Venues for performances include the Parish Church of St. Andrew and St. George in Stevenage and also the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage. On occasions we give smaller concerts in the local area, most recently Watton at Stone.
We have also participated in four concerts in the Royal Albert Hall in London, together with other Hertfordshire Choirs, performing Britten's War Requiem in 1994; Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in 1999 and Verdi's Requiem in 2003. In 2007 we were involved in the most recent Joint Herts Choirs event, the Grande Messe des Morts by Hector Berlioz.
The choir is keen to work with other groups in the local community. In 2007 we gave informal performances of "Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo" to the pupils of the Leys school and shoppers in ASDA. The funds for this were provided by Making Music Eastern through their "Reach Out" scheme, which allowed us to take the same music to another school and also to a residential home in that year. Community groups who would be interested in making a link with the choir are invited to contact the secretary.
Also in 2007 we organised a choral workshop run by Sue Hollingworth as part of the BBC "Play it Again" campaign. This event being free for any attendees in the community whether they were in a choir or had never sung before.
The choir has undertaken concert tours, the first in 1990 to the Salzburg region of Austria. This was followed, in May 1992, by a tour to the Moselle region of Germany, and in April 1996 by a 12 day tour to the USA visiting Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, staying with host families at each venue. Our most recent tour was in May 1999 when we spent five days in Prague, in the Czech Republic, giving concerts in three different churches in the City centre.
We operate on a non-profit basis i.e. we are a registered charity (Registered Charity Number 284221).
To find out more about our history click here.