Christmas with Birmingham Bach Choir

Celebrate Christmas with two festive concerts and a special appearance.

Carols By Candlelight (Saturday 14th December 2013, St Francis’ Church, Bournville, Birmingham) sees the choir joined by St Francis’ Children’s Choir to sing a range of well-loved and little known carols.

Expect to hear Once In Royal David’s City, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night and Hark The Herald Angels Sing as well as a lesser known arrangement of In The Bleak Midwinter, Harold Darke’s musical setting of Pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rossetti’s verse, and Blessed Be That Maid Marie by contemporary Welsh composer Gareth Treseder.

The reader is the poet Euan Tait, who has collaborated with conductor/ composer Paul Spicer for Unfinished Remembering, a new choral symphony which will be premiered at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in September 2014 as part of a UK-wide programme of events marking the centenary of the outbreak of The Great War 1914.

Carols By Candlelight tickets are £12 (concessions £10). Family tickets (2x adults and up to 3 children) £25. All proceeds go to St Marys Hospice Fund.

This is followed by Nine Lessons And Carols (Sunday 22n d December 2013, 4pm), a free/donations performance at St Paul’s Church in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.

A Birmingham Bach Choir spokesperson said: “This is a very traditional and beautiful service in a historic church. It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Christmas and hear both traditional and little known carols including Britten’s beautiful Hymn To The Virgin, Sweelinck’s Hodie Christus Natus Est, Resonet in Laudibus by Jacob Handl and Herbert Howells’ Magnificat.

“There’ll be plenty of opportunities for the audience to exercise their own vocal prowess too, if they wish to join in.”

In addition to these concerts, members of the choir will also be performing a few festive favourites in The Atrium of the New Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham on Thursday 19st December 2013 (6.30pm-8pm) in aid of injured service personnel and their families. All welcome, with singing and donations encouraged.

Tickets for all concerts available from 0121 705 4418; by email: [email protected].com; book online via: www.birmingham.bachchoir.com