THE SOUTH WEST CHAMBER CHOIR Saturday 2nd April 2011, 7.30 pm St Eustachius’ Church, Tavistock
(In aid of The Plymouth and West Devon Cassette, Talking Newspaper for the Blind)
ON April 2nd, in Tavistock Parish Church, the South West Chamber Choir will be presenting a concert of choral music covering six centuries. The programme will include a
variety of sacred pieces ranging from Thomas Tallis’s I call and cry to Thee, O Lord through to the well-known Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Faure, and a setting of The Beatitudes by the modern Estonian composer Arvo Part. However, this year the South West Chamber Choir is particularly proud to be giving the first performances of new pieces by two local composers. The first is the anthem There is but one God by Andrew Wilson, the second a set of Three Motets by Jason Smart; both composers have written these pieces especially for the Choir.
The Choir will be conducted by their Musical Director, Stephen Trahair, and accompanied by Dr Sean Sweeney, Organist and Musical Director at Tavistock Parish Church. The violist Don King and the recorder player Chrissie Russell will provide continuo support in some of the items.
The South West Chamber Choir, a group of some 25 voices, was formed in 1995. Rehearsing weekly in term-time, the singers have gained an increasingly wide-ranging repertoire of choral music embracing many genres. Much of the music undertaken is challenging, some unaccompanied, and covers a span of seven centuries up to the present day. The Choir performs regularly in Tavistock and other local concert venues throughout Devon and Cornwall. Other engagements undertaken have included deputising for the Cathedral Choirs at Hereford, and Truro, St David’s and Brecon in Wales, and Tewkesbury Abbey and Bath Abbey; this year the Choir will be returning to Truro Cathedral in July and will be in Exeter Cathedral in 2012. In December, 2010, the Choir was invited to record Christmas music for the BBC.
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Stephen Trahair, the South West Chamber Choir’s Musical Director, has sung with the choir since 2003. Although a lawyer by profession, music is his main interest; he was the Director of Music at Buckland Monachorum church for much of his youth, and has written and arranged music for secular and church choirs as well as for the organ. He has published collections of
unaccompanied carol arrangements and romantic part-songs, and two albums for organ.
Dr Sean Sweeney held his first organist’s post at the age of eleven in Swansea. He graduated from the University of Wales with an honours degree in Music and has an MA from Reading and a Doctorate from Bath University. He studied organ with Dr Michael Smith at Llandaff Cathedral and Colin Walsh at Salisbury. He has performed at many different concert
Jason Smart studied at the Royal College of Music under Sidney Campbell (organ), Thornton Lofthouse (harpsichord) and Herbert Howells (composition), gaining a first prize for music theory and several diplomas including the ARCO with the Sawyer Prize. He subsequently became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. For three years he was the organ scholar at St George’s Chapel, Windsor and for part of that time acted as the assistant
venues both in the UK and abroad. He has been Assistant Music Director of the Morriston Orpheus Male Voice Choir, Conductor of the Southsea Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the South West Chamber Choir. In 2005 he was appointed Director of Music at Tavistock Parish Church, and recorded his first CD of organ music in 2006.
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