Armistice Day Concert
A combined concert by the St Kilda Brass and the Dunedin RSA Choir
Wednesday 11th November 2020 – 7pm at Knox Church, Dunedin
Tickets: No pre-sale – Tickets available before the concert from 6pm onwards.
Cash only! $ 20 per person, Students and Children $ 10.
We are incredibly pleased to be in concert again. With all the Covid restrictions, there has been little time for rehearsal. However, combining our concert with St Kilda Brass, we can promise you a very exciting musical treat and we hope you are filled with anticipation after an absence of choral offerings from us for a year. It will not only be exciting with the Brass, and the Organ, and our still strong male voices, there will be some moving and nostalgic moments while some of the songs that are played and sung relate to that tragic and destructive World War of 1914-18.
We do have a talented young singer, Alexander McAdam assisting us and enhancing some of our songs. He has been trained by Gladys Hope and looks to have a promising future. In the recent Newzcats Cleveland Contemporary Solo Awards for high-school-age singers, he received a commendation. His father John is a St Kilda Brass player.
Jeremiah Clarke from the 17th century composed a trumpet voluntary that is well known and still very popular. The choir will put everything into this to give it the treatment that it deserves and begin the concert in a robust fashion. But our songs are not all centuries old and we come into the 21st century with a dramatic song from The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, by Karl Jenkins. which was premiered in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on ANZAC Day, 2000.
The choir sings a beautiful and moving song, the words having been written in about 20 minutes by a Canadian army doctor early morning on 3rd May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypre. The music was written much later by another Canadian, Stephen Chatman. It has been part of official Remembrance Day ceremonies for many years. Alongside this song the choir with Alex sings a very famous and appropriate hymn in this context. The words were written in 1820 by Henry Francis Lyte and the music, Eventide, composed in 1860 by William Henry Monk. We hope we can do justice to its beauty.
There are many famous operas by Italian composers and the choir sings the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco composed in 1842 and which established Verdi’s fame. Every wife, mother, girlfriend, sibling and friend who saw their loved one leave for war prayed that they would come home again. We hear that cry in a wonderful song that we sing from Les Miserables. It was first sung in 1980. Alex joins the choir again.
There are three other songs from the 20th century, each one very famous, one being from the musical Chess and the other composed by Leonard Cohen. The third is an English patriotic song that can relate to any country. The lyrics were written by Cecil Spring Rice and they were set to music by Gustav Holst, a notable British composer.
As in the past, we leave you to guess the names of most of the songs. There are some pretty strong clues.
St Kilda Brass, as well as playing with the choir for some songs, will entertain us with a wonderful and appropriate selection of pieces of their own. Some are poignant, others lively and some are tunes from the Second World War that most of us will know. Included in these is a march from a great film, The Dam Busters. It will be high class entertainment.
Anyone who attends this concert is in for a great treat. There is little musical entertainment that can match the combination of brass, pipe organ and male voices. (This happens to be written by a choir member, organist and former brass player!) It will break the shackles that have held us back from live performances over the last few months. It will be inspiring. Bring friends and they will remain friends forever!