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BECOME A FRIEND
Membership is £150 per annum, for which you will have access to:
- Free ‘Friends’ concerts and recitals (up to 6 a year)
- Reduced price tickets for own-promoted concerts including our forthcoming major London concert at Cadogan Hall (typically 20%, although special offers may carry further reductions)
- Reductions on purchase of CDs, DVDs and other merchandise
- ‘Friends’ newsletter
To pay the Friends subscription online with debit or credit card, using our secure PayPal service, go to Online Payments |
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OUR 40TH ANNIVERSARY APPEAL
In addition to launching the Friends scheme, we are also seeking to raise funds to enable us to carry out longer-term initiatives. These include:
- Staging two major concerts to celebrate the anniversary and our series of free concerts at St Andrews
- Making a new 40th anniversary recording of English music
- Re-housing and re-cataloguing the Choir’s extensive library of performing material to make this resource readily available on loan to other organisations
- Providing bursaries for training younger singers and those on benefits and enabling all members to participate equally in opportunities to perform concerts abroad.
Donations towards these projects will be acknowledged throughout the season on all printed material and of course here on our web-site (and any associated sites where we are able to place our own material). Donations will be acknowledged on the following scale:
Platinum members: £1,000 or above
Gold members: £500 - £1,000
Silver members £150 - £500
Friends of the ECC - £150
The English Chamber Choir is a charity (no: 269245) so all donations can qualify for Gift Aid. If you come to one of our Friends concerts forms will be available; otherwise we can send the relevant forms to you by post or e-mail.
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FORTY YEARS ON |
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The English Chamber Choir will be forty years old in February 2012. The old adage ‘Life begins at 40’ indeed holds true for our unique company of singers who continue to go from strength to strength, appearing around 50 times a year in everything from classical concerts and rock spectaculars to tv idents and acclaimed cd recordings.
The Choir’s fortieth season will include major concert performances including a rare performance of Antonio Teixeira’s Te Deum written in 1734 for eight soloists and five four-part choirs and instrumental ensemble (scheduled for a major British Festival and at Cadogan Hall in London) and a ‘reunion’ concert and recording involving Choir members past and present. This is in addition to our usual busy schedule appearing with the Belmont Ensemble at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The Choir’s recording of works inspired by the 9th century Byzantine Abbess Kassiani has recently been released on Naxos and further recordings are planned for early in the New Year.
To help and support all this activity, we launched a ‘Friends of the ECC’ scheme, with two informal concerts at our home base of St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe in the City of London. On 13 October we performed Handel's Dixit Dominus and on 17 November Victoria's Requiem (1605). This latter evening was dedicated to the memory of Julia Singer, one of our most active members and an enthusiastic instigator of the 'Friends' scheme, who had died a few days earlier after a short but severe battle with cancer. Both concerts drew enthusiastic audiences - the second one being swelled by many of Julia's family and friends who came to join in celebrating her memory.
Admission is free. Of course we hope that you may choose to become a Friend and support the work of the Choir to whatever extent you may afford, but we don’t just want your money. Over these forty years the Choir’s membership has grown into its own community, offering friendship and support amongst its members. We now want to encourage other music-lovers to enjoy our live performances, listen to our recordings and become part of a wider ECC community. |
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CONCERTS FOR FRIENDS
Our 'Friends' concerts are usually held on Thursdays at our 'home' church of St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 5DE (nearest stations Blackfriars or St Paul's). They begin at 7.30pm, last around 45 minutes and are followed by wine and finger buffet food.
However, due to the large number of Christmas events in December, we are inviting Friends to join us instead on the evening of Tuesday 13 December at the annual Parish carol service held in St Andrew's.
And in January we were planning to perform Fauré's Requiem in St Andrew's, but have been invited to sing the same work on Tuesday 17 January at St Martin-in-the-Fields, also beginning at 6.30pm. Unfortunatley this concert does not have free admission, but existing friends will qualify for a substantial reduction. Please e-mail manager@englishchamberchoir.com for more details.
More details of both these events can be found on our main concerts page.
Thursday 8 March 7.30pm
St Andrew-bby-the-Wardrobe
TCHAIKOVSKY Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
with The Revd Dr Ivan Moody psaltis
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