The choir is currently around 35 strong.  We rehearse 7 p.m.-9 p.m on Monday nights in the Pettit Centre, which is the hall next-door to Our Lady of Grace church, on the corner of Fergusson Drive and Palmer Crescent, in Heretaunga, Upper Hutt.  As a community choir, we will accept all comers, but obviously we particularly welcome people with some knowledge of musical notation. Anyone is welcome to come to a rehearsal to see how they get on.

 

We usually give three concerts a year in Upper Hutt, in churches or school halls as appropriate; sometimes we combine with other choirs and give a second concert in their area; and we have recently been participating in some of the Hutt Valley Concert Orchestra's concerts.

 

 The music we sing varies from early sacred music, often in Latin, to arrangements of folk music, and twentieth-century songs from musical shows.  At various times we have sung in German, French, and Spanish, without major problems, but the majority of music is in English or Latin

 

Joanne Roelofs took over as conductor in 2010.     

   

The choir was invited to participate in a 'Praise Be' telecast celebrating 150 years of Christian worship in Upper Hutt. The choir, and later an audience from several congregations, were recorded in St Mary's Church, Silverstream, on October 4th, and the first broadcast was on October 23, when the choir's items were Bruckner's Locus Iste and the last part of the Kyrie from Karl Jenkins's The Armed Man; a Mass for Peace.  The choir had recorded the complete Kyrie, and also Keith Hampton's True Light; these may have been broadcast later, or in the future.

 

The year's final concert was a collection of choruses and arias from operas and oratorios, with soloists from the New Zealand School of Music. The principal item was a choral suite from The Armed Man; this selection comprises the Mass sections incorporated in the full work (Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei) followed by Jenkins's setting of Kipling's Hymn before Action.

 

Rehearsals for 2012 will start on January 30. Our first concerts will be on May 26 in the Hutt City Little Theatre at 6:30, and in Upper Hutt on May 27 at 2:30. We will be combining with a children's choir. Shared items are the National Anthem, Karl Jenkins's Adiemus, John Rutter's Look at the World, and David Brunner's In theBeauty Way. The children sing As Long as I Have Music, Dreams, I've Been to Haarlem and Bop Shu Wop. The adults will sing Vaughan Williams's antiphon Let All The World in Every Corner Sing, William Billings'sModern Musick, from 1781, Bach'sJesu, Joy of Man;s Desiring and You Raise Me Up by Graham and Lovland. A smaller group (or groups) will sing Java Jive and That Lonesome Road.

We would welcome your comments on the website, and we are always happy to accept new members.  

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