TAVERNER CHOIR - BRITTEN, TIPPETT

Little St Mary's Church
Trumpington Street CAMBRIDGE
SATURDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2007 7.30 pm
A Voyage Round Britten
ALL PEOPLE THAT ON EARTH DO DWELL
CAMBRIDGE TAVERNER CHOIR
Owen Rees, director
CORN EXCHANGE BOX OFFICE
Tickets : £12.00 ; concessions £9.00

PROGRAMME
Britten: Saint Nicholas
Tippett: Five Negro Spirituals
Kodaly: Evening Song
Bartók: Three Hungarian Folksongs

CAMBRIDGE TAVERNER CHOIR
The choir emerged from the Oxford and Cambridge colleges choral tradition and has built a reputation for powerful and expressive performances of Renaissance polyphony. Under the direction of Owen Rees, now director of music at Queen's College, Oxford, the choir seeks to explore the impact and atmosphere that the most expressive music of the Renaissance must originally have had. Rees's work as a leading musicologist of the Renaissance has consistently informed the choir's repertoire and approach to perfor- mance, particularly in presenting his disco- veries in Spanish and Portuguese polyphony. The choir has released an acclaimed series of recordings, and reached the shortlist for the Gramophone Early Music Awards in 1994: Gramophone praised the choir for its 'sheer musicianship'.

The choir has recently performed at the York Early Music Festival, the Oslo Church Music Festival and the Cambridge Summer Music Festival, and regularly performs to enthusiastic audiences in the beautiful and resonant environments of Jesus College Chapel and Little St Mary's Church in Cambridge.

OWEN REES
is active as both performer and scholar. He is Fellow in Music and Organist (i.e. Director of Chapel music) at The Queen's College, Lecturer at Somerville College, and Lecturer in the Faculty of Music of Oxford University. Born in 1964, he received his University education at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge. In addition to The Queen's College Choir, he directs the early-music ensembles A Capella Portuguesa and the Cambridge Taverner Choir. As a musicologist he specializes in the music of Portugal, Spain, and England during the fifteenth Southbank Publishing sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, scholarship

Little St. Mary's
Around 1140, there was a Norman church, called St. Peter at Trumpington Gate, which was outside the town boundary. In 1206 it was given to the Hospital of of St. John (now St. John's College). In 1284 Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, transferred the church and its endowments to his new foundation of Peterhouse. The church was used as a college chapel. In 1348 being ruinous, the college rebuilt it as a five-bayed college chapel. In 1450 the western most bay was added and a screen was put up to indicate the division at that point between the college chapel and the parish church. In 1632 Peterhouse decided to build another chapel and the building came to be a parish church again.

Richard Crashaw, the metaphysical poet, was associated with this church, while he was fellow of Peterhouse (1638 - 43). Ten years later the decoration was damaged by the Puritan extremist William Dowsing. It was then refitted in 1741 with panelling and a choir gallery and central (today's) pulpit. The church was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1856-7 removing the old woodwork.

Further restorations in 1876 in 1891. South Chapel added 1931, designed by Thomas Lyon architect of Sidney Sussex College Chapel. The Washington Monument commemorates a great uncle of George Washington, Vicar of Little St. Mary's and Fellow of Peterhouse. The National American flag is thought to have been born here.

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