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Directed by Paul Spicer
Accompanist: Mark Dancer
Bookings are open (online link). Alternative link to the booking form for manual entries (PDF). Price £0 to £20. Full-time students go free.
Read our news item.
The 2024 choral workshop will be held at Petersfield Methodist Church on Saturday 28th September. It will be run by the Festival conductor, Paul Spicer, and will focus on the poignant Dona Nobis Pacem, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of the pieces to be performed at the 2025 Festival.
Vaughan Williams’ powerful plea for peace, Dona Nobis Pacem, was written in 1936. This beautiful, deeply moving and ultimately optimistic work has lost none of its relevance. Set for chorus and orchestra with soprano and baritone soloists, it combines Biblical texts with the vivid, dramatic poems of Walt Whitman. This will be an opportunity to work on a piece which will be sung in the 2025 Petersfield Musical Festival.
Paul Spicer is one of the leading choral conductors in the UK. He is a conducting teacher, composer, writer, lecturer and a specialist in 20th century British music. Paul has been Festival Conductor since 2005. He is best known as a choral conductor, partly through the many CDs he made with the Finzi Singers for Chandos Records and more recently with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir for Somm Recordings.
Paul has been a regular guest conductor with the BBC Singers and is in great demand for his choral workshops, including the choral courses he runs under his foundation, The English Choral Experience.
Petersfield Methodist Church is just two minutes’ walk from the station, where there is a car park (entrance on Frenchman’s Road) with ample parking at the weekend. Please bring your own lunch – or visit one of the many cafes within a few minutes’ walk. Tea and coffee will be provided, on arrival and in the morning break.
Timetable for the day
10 am Doors open
10.30 am-11.30 am Workshop session 1
11.30 am-11.50 am Refreshment break
11.50 am-1 pm Workshop session 2
1 pm-2 pm Lunch
2 pm-3.15 pm Workshop session 3
3.30 pm-4.30 pm Workshop session 4, including informal performance.
