Friday 10 October 2014

RFS Autumn Concert 2014







The Armed Man 
and  
Requiem for the Living

The two works in this concert are both pleas for peace.  Donald Swann’s Requiem for the Living (1971) is a setting of C Day Lewis’s 1962 poem, which uses the structure, but not the text, of the Requiem Mass to make a vivid plea to abolish nuclear weapons and respect the beauty of the world, which a nuclear holocaust would destroy.
The Armed Man subtitled A Mass for Peace and dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis, was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum to mark the museum's move from London to Leeds.  It intersperses movements from Catholic Mass, with the fifteenth century French folk song L’homme armé and texts selected by Guy Wilson, then Master of the museum, from other religious, literary and historical sources, including the Islamic call to prayer, the Bible, the Mahabharata and works by Kipling, Mallory, Tennyson, Swift, Dryden, Wilson himself and Sankichi Toge, a survivor the Hiroshima bombing, who later died of leukaemia.

Thursday 12 June 2014

Summer Concert 2014


Following their joint concert featuring Alexander L’Estrange’s Zimbe! in June 2012 in the Parish Church, and having joined forces with them in Liverpool for a concert in the Anglican Cathedral, the Royal Free Singers were glad to welcome the G:Force Gospel Choir back to Windsor for a third joint venture. The audience enjoyed a cocktail of music for a summer evening featuring songs in a variety of styles and traditions including gospel (of course), jazz, folk, end of the pier show and musical theatre, featuring the suite from Les Miserables.

G:Force, the Formby Arts College Gospel Choir, includes teachers, students, friends, family & colleagues making a truly inter-generational choir! Its repertoire covered many contemporary and classic gospel songs, including student-composed originals and new commissions.