Our choir has arrived safely “across the pond” and their Cathedral Residency is underway!
On Sunday, Marilyn Conklin wrote: All is well! We’re still recovering from jet lag, but we had good rehearsals yesterday.
We’re all enjoying London. We attended Sunday service at St. Paul’s Cathedral this morning. Their choir and the London Sinfonia performed the Nelson Mass by Haydn. It was an incredible experience.
The choirs then traveled to Canterbury where they will be singing Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral throughout this week, Monday-Thursday.
You can watch Monday’s and Tuesday’s services here:
And be sure to check out the upcoming livestreams on Wednesday at 11:30am and Thursday at 11:30am!
After this, the choirs will journey north to St. Albans and offer Evensong on Sunday at St. Albans Cathedral (sadly for us here in the United States, this service will not be livestreamed, but if we get any pictures and/or video, we’ll put them up on St. John’s Facebook page!)
Before the trip, St. John’s choir director Richard Gray wrote: So, why are we going on this tour? Why are we preparing for something like this? It’s a good question. The easy answer is that this is something that Episcopal church choirs in the United States tend to do every few years because we sing a lot of English choral music and it’s fun. There’s truth to that – it is fun! But we are going because it will be an event for us and for you, the church, for the choir to experience not only singing but leading liturgies in these grand sacred spaces with music that was written with those particular spaces in mind. To take our ministry – what we rehearse, practice, offer and sing here at St. John the Evangelist – and transfer that into places like Canterbury and St. Albans Cathedrals is going to be an experience that will sit with all of us for a very long time. Actually, what I am most looking forward to, is how we are going to feel singing the music we sang in England upon returning to St. John’s afterward. Sometimes you need to go “home” to gain a deeper understanding and even appreciation for why it is that we do this – why we sing and make music here.
Our prayers for continued safe travels to all our musicians!
