2010 – 2011: our 50th anniversary season

This season we learnt 50 pieces for 4 concerts

• Choir favourites and commissions at St John’s, Southdown
• Christmas with the children’s choirs from St Nicholas and Our Lady of Lourdes
• Monteverdi Vespers at St John’s Smith Square
• Our 50th Anniversary weekend in June

We also held a phenomenally successful fundraiser (“Redbourn not Glyndebourne”); sang a weekend of services at Winchester Cathedral; held two singing days (Monteverdi Vespers and Victoria Requiem) and recorded our JubliLEA CD.

We worked with some amazing professional musicians: Robert Hollingworth, I Fagiolini, English Cornetts and Sackbutts and the Monteverdi Band for the Monteverdi Vespers; singer Eammon Dougan for the Monteverdi Singing Day; cellist James Barralet and organist Edward Picton-Turbevill for the CD recording and academic Jeremy Summerly for the Victoria Requiem Singing Day.

We said goodbye to four longstanding members of the choir – Chris Lemar, Judith Mann, Jeremy and Grace Hill – and added five new recruits. We recruited our first ever intern – the wonderful Hugo Beardsall – and are delighted to see the intern scheme going from strength to strength in the current season.

It has been an exciting season on the conductor front. James Sherlock departed after the CD recording in May to pursue his career as a pianist, and three ex-conductors – Peter Collis, Craig McLeish and Madeleine Lovell – kindly stepped in to share our 50th anniversary concert.

The forthcoming season will see us recruit a new permanent conductor and continue to grow under new leadership.