Seventy Years of Singing A year-by-year history of St Mary’s Singers and Lewisham Choral Society 1950 to 2020

Compiled by Martin Bull

“It is a constant source of pride and joy to the choir as a whole that the mutual fellowship and pleasure derived from practice and performance is of the highest order, and provides a much- cherished feature of their activity”

Quote from the programme for the choir’s 10th anniversary concert held on 28 May 1960 1950 In October Lewis Vincent – organist and Director of Music of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Lewisham – brings together 27 singers as St Mary’s Singers (SMS) to take part in this year’s Borough of Lewisham Festival of Music, at which we SMS logo win first prize in our class. This mixed choir initially consists of men from the church choir and St Mary’s, Lewisham women parishioners. The choir’s constitution states its purpose as ‘to perform works beyond the normal scope of a church choir’.

In November we sing sacred music by Bach and Brahms at St Mary’s. Joining us as soprano soloist is Roxane Houston who next year goes on to join the chorus at Glyndebourne Opera and to sing the role of Zerlina in Mozart’s under at the Edinburgh International Festival. After a singing career that spanned 30 years, she was to pass away in April 2020 at the age of 100. Baritone soloist Norman Tattershall once sang Aeneas to Kirsten Flagstad’s Dido in Purcell’s opera. SMS founder Lewis Vincent at St Mary’s new organ console

Reminiscences of the early days of SMS Lewis Vincent’s son Alan – a member of the church choir from the age of six until his early 20s – says his father “was a very fine pianist, organist and inspirational conductor, who at the church was able to recruit and sustain over many years a choir some 40-strong, including around 20 boys. From scratch he formed St Mary’s Singers into a choir of sufficient competence, size and strength to be able to perform major choral works with full orchestra”.

Alan adds: “I do remember my dad tearing his hair out about a particular soprano in St Mary’s Singers with a piercing vibrato about a major third wide!” Alan’s cousin Anne adds to this story: “It was a very piercing sound and Lewis got very frustrated. Eventually it all became too much. He went up to her, shaking his fists, and said in a loud voice: “Will you stop singing, woman!” Anne says “Unsurprisingly, we never saw her again”.

And Alan’s wife, Carole Vincent, née Milton, adds: “I joined St Mary’s Singers when I was 16 with my friend Andrea. It must have been very irritating for Lewis Vincent to have two giggling girls in the front row. But we were enthusiastic sopranos who could hit the high notes. As a teenager who had never sung in a large choir, singing in Lewisham Town Hall with orchestra was an experience I shall never forget: it was emotionally overwhelming. Carols at Christmas, Brahms’s , Dvořák’s Stabat Mater performed in St Mary’s Church and a large autumn event in the Town Hall are among my most enduring musical memories”.

1951 Two of the soloists in SMS’s March performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater will also go on to star at Glyndebourne and . New Zealand-born soprano Edna Graham is chosen by Sir to sing the title role in the first performance of Delius’s opera Irmelin in 1953. After giving up her singing career, she conducted around 50 operas and musicals at the Kenneth More Theatre in Ilford. In 1960 Scottish bass David Kelly creates the role of Snug the Joiner in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

SMS’s performance in July of Brahms’ A German Requiem forms part of a series of musical events held up to the end of the year to raise funds for the rebuilding and modernising of St Mary’s Church organ. The instrument was made in 1882 by Sheffield organ builders Brindley & Foster and had undergone no major repair since.

1952 Our Christmas concert this year contains music by two contemporary composers: Martin Shaw was to complete over 300 published works before his death in 1958; the organist Harold Darke’s carol In the bleak midwinter becomes a firm yuletide favourite.

1953 A series of recitals and concerts at St Mary’s is held to celebrate the re-opening of the church organ. These include appearances by Isobel (later Dame Isobel) Baillie – “regarded as one of the 20thcentury’s great singers” & one of the original singers in Vaughan Williams’ – with St Mary’s Choristers (on 22 January) and (on 29 January) John (later Sir John) Dykes-Bower – organist at St Paul’s Cathedral for 30 years; Edgar Cook, organist at Southwark Cathedral for 42 years – the first person to hold the post – was also due to give a recital on March 17, but sadly died 12 days earlier.

Three SMS performances this year are also part of the celebrations. In January we sing what is listed as Mozart’s Twelfth Mass, although that attribution is now disputed and generally given instead to Wenzel Müller. The performance of in June commemorates the new Queen’s coronation, which took place four days earlier. Among the young trebles from St Mary’s choristers who join us for this concert and are listed in the concert programme is Alan Vincent, our founder’s son. The programme also tells us that “The St Mary’s Singers have a few vacancies for Ladies and Gentlemen”.

Later in the mid-1950s Dame Isobel also appears – with SMS this time – in a concert in what was then unimaginatively named the Lewisham Town Hall Extension (later to be known as Lewisham Concert Hall, then Lewisham Theatre and finally Broadway Theatre, Catford). She sings in Handel’s , a work which she was to perform over 1,000 times during her career. However, Alan Vincent remembers that by now she was well past her best; as a boy chorister in the church choir that joins SMS for the concert, he witnesses what he calls ‘a sad occasion’.

1955 The photo of SMS Director of Music Lewis Vincent with the church choir of St Mary’s, Lewisham, which he also directs, is taken this July.

1956 In our two performances of Brahms’s A German Requiem this March – in the parish churches of Sidcup and Lewisham – we are joined by The Lamorbey Park Singers, another group of which Lewis Vincent is Music Director.

When we sing Handel’s Messiah in Lewisham in April, in Coulsdon in May and in Crofton Park in October, the Scottish Daniel McCoshan is one of the soloists. Although as a 6- Daniel McCoshan & Dame Joan Sutherland year old he lost his left eye in an accident, this didn’t hamper his future success: he goes on to sing at Glyndebourne and for 30 years in the chorus at Covent Garden, appearing with many great names of opera.

1957 In November Christine Vincent – Lewis’s daughter and an SMS member – is soprano soloist in our performance of Fauré’s Requiem and Gounod’s St Cecilia Mass. She will go on to study singing at the Guildhall School of Music and her first engagement will be in the Black and White Minstrel Show. Christine then does lots more in the West End, including appearing in the Royal Command Performance.

1958 E.H. (Ernie) Warrell is accompanying the chorus on the church organ in our November performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah; he had been organist of King’s College, and of Southwark Cathedral and then at St Paul’s , where he was still playing up to the age of 95 in 2010!

1959 We are re-joined by baritone Norman Tattersall and two other distinguished soloists this April for our performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. The Daily Telegraph describes Marjorie Thomas as ‘one of the foremost oratorio singers in the period immediately after the Second World War’; in 1954 she had recorded Gerontius with Sir . Marjorie Thomas & William Herbert She turned to teaching after retiring from the concert platform in 1973; one of her pupils was , who was herself to be a soloist for LCS in 1995 (see below). Australian tenor William Herbert sang at the inaugural concert of the in 1951 and was a soloist at the Queen’s coronation. SMS are one of several choirs who make up the chorus for this concert, organised by the Lewisham Arts Council. The Council was founded in 1946 and the programme describes it as ‘the oldest surviving organisation of its kind in Greater London’. SMS are affiliated to it in 1956.

Lewisham Arts Council logo

1960 The list of singers in the programme for our performance this May of Handel’s Messiah includes Martin Horsey. As one of the boy choristers of St Mary’s he had sung the same work with us in 1956, and in 1958 he is listed as joint leader of the choristers in the programme for when SMS present Mendelssohn’s Elijah. But now 14-year old Martin is to have quite a change of scene just over a month after singing Messiah at St Mary’s: he lands the part of the Artful Dodger in the first stage production of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! in what is now the Noël Coward Theatre in London’s West End. On the opening night, 30 June this year, he is joined in the cast by Ron Moody as Fagin, plus Barrie Humphries and Tony Robinson among others. A coach trip up to town is organised for fellow church choir members to see the young star appear on stage. Martin goes on to become a film and TV actor, a playwright and a Martin Horsey as the Artful Dodger a producer in California. Incidentally, also singing in Messiah is Alan Vincent, now listed as an SMS tenor, and Christopher Stringfellow as a junior boy chorister. Chris eventually goes on to become the church’s choir master.

SMS are now 10 years old and we celebrate this anniversary in October with a concert at Lewisham Town Hall. Back in 1927 Eric Greene, the concert’s tenor soloist, had been singled out by Sir to sing the part of the Evangelist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion. 31 years later he sang the same role at the Leith Hill Music Festival under the baton of , only five months before the composer’s sudden death. Today he sings the famous Hiawatha Coleridge-Taylor aria Onaway! Awake, beloved! from Samuel Taylor-Coleridge’s cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. The programme tells us that ‘this performance is given by permission of the Personal Representatives of S. Coleridge-Taylor, by arrangement with H. Coleridge-Taylor’. The composer died in 1912, aged only 37, after collapsing at West Croydon Station. H. Coleridge-Taylor is his son – Hiawatha – named after the lead character in the work which gave his father worldwide musical success!

A photo of SMS singers taken from the 10th anniversary concert programme

The programme mentions that seven of the original 27 SMS members ‘are still active and consistent performers’ and ‘the number of members now on our books is 59’. Rehearsals – or practices as they are then called – are held every Monday at 8pm in Ladywell’s Elfrida Hall and the annual subscription is £1 (the equivalent of £19.29 in 2020). And the programme adds that: ‘It is a constant source of pride and joy to SMS as a whole that the mutual fellowship and pleasure derived from practice and performance is of the highest order, and provides a much-cherished feature of their activity’.

1961 This April we take part in another Lewisham Arts Council concert, on this occasion singing Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The Royal Artillery Orchestra accompanies the chorus and soloists; it is Britain’s first, and oldest permanent, orchestra – with a history stretching back to 1557. Angela Jenkins, tonight’s soprano soloist, will go on to give recitals all over the UK with the baritone John Noble. In 1963 she will be among the cast of BBC TV’s film of ’s realisation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera; others will include Janet Baker, Kenneth McKellar and Heather Harper.

1963 In May SMS again join with singers from churches & musical bodies in Lewisham for a performance of Handel’s Messiah organised by Lewisham Arts Council in the Town Hall.

1964 This photo of the members of SMS (with Lewis Vincent on the far right) is taken this year. In fact there are several members of the Vincent family here: Lewis’s wife Edith, his two sisters, his niece Anne, her then husband and another of her uncles. “There was a lot of

music in my family” says Anne.

1965 In May SMS join another combined chorus of singers from the borough to perform Verdi’s Requiem in the newly renamed Lewisham Concert Hall, previously the Town Hall Extension, as part of the Lewisham Music & Drama Festival. After a successful singing career, tonight’s mezzo-soprano soloist Barbara Robotham was to become a distinguished voice teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music.

1966 It’s an SMS old favourite again this May – Handel’s Messiah – back at the Concert Hall with members of other local choirs.

1967 The tenor soloist in the November SMS concert is Brian Wright. He went on to sing for three seasons with Benjamin Britten’s English Opera Group before – in 1973 – becoming Music Director of the leading London choir Goldsmiths Choral Union, a post he holds to this day. The bass soloist in the same concert is Alan Opie, who two years later Brian Wright was to begin a career singing with which has lasted for more than 50 years. Alan Opie

1971 The 21st anniversary of SMS is celebrated with a performance of Elijah in October. Four founder members are “still actively singing” with the choir, which now has a total of 70 members. Of 250 past members, 50 are also able to take part in the concert, making a total of 118 singers on the night. Tonight’s tenor soloist Anthony Johnson was later to be known as Anthony Rolfe Johnson. His Guardian obituary in 2010 called him “one of the most attractive and intelligent from the 1970s onwards”. And the organist tonight is Kenneth Lawrence, who will Anthony Rolfe Johnson appear as a regular accompanist to our concerts until the mid-1980s.

This photo of SMS members appears in the programme for the choir’s 21st anniversary concert

1972 SMS join Lewisham Festival Choir (LFC) for their May performance of Messiah. The LFC was formed to give a choral concert each year as part of the annual Lewisham Festival of Music & Drama. Anthony Rolfe Johnson (still billed as plain Anthony Johnson) is again our tenor soloist.

SMS perform music by Bruckner, Vivaldi and Vaughan Williams as part of St Mary’s Festival of Flowers & Music. Two days before, Leslie Pearson (“one of Britain's most versatile and distinguished keyboard players”) gives a recital as part of the Festival. He also happens to be Lewis Vincent’s son-in- law!

The baritone soloist in our performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is Patrick McCarthy, who two years later – like everyone will be, if Andy Warhol is to be believed – was world-famous for 15 minutes. He was in the audience at a Proms performance of Orff’s when soloist Thomas Allen fainted under the hot TV lights and had to be carried off stage. Patrick knew the solo baritone part and so, egged on by André Previn & Patrick McCarthy his friends in the arena, rushes behind stage, offers his services and comes on in a hastily-borrowed dinner jacket to sing in front of the bemused conductor André Previn, the 6,000 audience members in the hall and listeners to the live radio broadcast. These include his mother who is astounded to recognise her son’s voiceover the air. Patrick receives an ovation from the Prommers and the next day is all over the Press and is interviewed on radio and TV.

1973 The soloists in our performance of Haydn’s Creation in November are senior students at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, singing for us by courtesy of the Principal.

1974 Father and son make music together at our November concert: Lewis Vincent conducts a chorus made up of his choir, the SMS, and King Henry’s Singers, whose Director is Lewis’s son Alan.

1975 Our performances on 19 October and 8 & 22 November are given to celebrate SMS’s 25th anniversary.

1976 In December baritone John Heddle Nash returns to his Lewisham birthplace to sing in an evening of opera put on by the Lewisham Orchestral Society at the local concert hall, accompanied by Lewisham Philharmonic Orchestra and SMS. Among the music which the choir sings is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ cantata In Windsor Forest. The baritone’s father, the lyric tenor Heddle Nash, was a soloist in the premiere of RVW’s Serenade to Music; he was born in Deptford and had lived in Tyrwhitt Road, Brockley. His son sang with the Carl Rosa and Sadler’s Wells Opera companies. The programme for tonight’s concert says that 1976 has seen SMS’s ‘first excursions into the world of light and classical operas as a choir’. It adds that ‘Lewis Vincent and the choir are to be congratulated on the way in which they have accepted the challenge of fresh fields in addition to their normal programme’.

1977 In March Roan Grammar School for Boys and Roan School for Girls in inaugurate the celebrations for the schools’ tercentenary and centenary with a performance of Handel’s Messiah in which SMS are invited to participate.

As part of Lewisham Festival Choir, SMS sing in a concert performance of ’s comic opera Merrie in July. This is one of the events in the 1977 St Mary’s Festival of Flowers & Music, this year held to celebrate HM the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

1978 SMS’s performance of Elijah in November – according to the concert flyer – is to be given “in the presence of His Worship The Mayor of Lewisham and The Mayoress”.

1979 The April performance of an abridged version of Bach’s St Matthew Passion was part of a long-standing SMS tradition of singing this piece, Dvořák’s Stabat Mater and Brahms’ A German Requiem in rotation every Good Friday.

Lewis Vincent steps down after 29 years as SMS’s Director of Music. His assistant Geoffrey Mussard briefly fills in for him until the arrival of Colin Howard early next year.

SMS members are chosen as soloists in our November concert; they include Edward (Ted) Pratt and Doris Jones, who is the choir’s Librarian for many years. Having met Lewis Vincent’s niece Anne through her uncle’s choir, Ted will later marry Anne and they both choose to take Lewis’s surname as their new married name. They will both be long-standing choir committee members and Ted is choir Secretary in the early days of LCS.

Carols from the Carols for Choirs books appear in the Christmas concert – SMS are early users of these books from which LCS continues to sing to this day.

1980 In January South African-born Colin Howard takes over as SMS’s Director of Music. Last year he was appointed Director of Music at Colfe’s School and so begins a long and fruitful association between the choir and the school.

SMS join St Mary’s Church Choir at Choral Evensong on 1 June, when the Methodist minister, Socialist and pacifist Lord Colin Howard (Donald) Soper preaches the sermon. Donald Soper

1981 Doreen Walker appears as mezzo-soprano soloist in SMS’s November performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. She won a scholarship to study at the before becoming a professional singer and marrying SMS Director of Music Colin Howard. She would continue to appear regularly with SMS and LCS until 1993.

1982 By now SMS membership has increased to 75 singers, three of whom are founder members: John & Elsie Davis and Eric Simpson. Eric and his wife soon afterwards move to Norfolk, where he was to sing in the choir at Sandringham.

SMS participates in the March performance of Verdi’s Requiem at Fairfield Halls, Croydon organised by Colfe’s School Choir. A local Croydon newspaper writes that the concert was “nothing short of a choral and orchestral triumph” with ”a stunning sound from over 300 voices” and “a capacity audience of 1,500”.

1983 SMS become Lewisham Choral Society (LCS) on New Year’s Day and first appear as such in a Good Friday concert of music by Charles Wood and Henry Purcell. Alto Stella Jeffrey and bass Mark Symons – founder members of the newly-named LCS – remain members to this day.

LCS’s original logo Sarah Leonard – “one of Britain's most respected and versatile sopranos” – is a soloist in LCS’s November performance of Haydn’s Creation. 1984 At LCS’s Christmas concert the baritone soloist in the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols enters on a wrong note – but the choir carries on regardless. By now LCS has over 80 members.

1985 In February LCS members join in a Royal Albert Hall performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. Sarah Leonard is back as soprano soloist.

In March another Sarah – Sarah Sarah Leonard

(now Dame Sarah) Connolly – Judas Maccabaeus in the RAH appears as contralto soloist in LCS’s performance of excerpts from Handel’s Messiah.

Tracey Chadwell is soprano in LCS’s performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana in November. Gramophone magazine describes her as “a soprano of exceptional gifts and intelligence”. She was sadly to die ten years later when only in her mid-thirties, after what Gramophone describes as “an amazingly good-humoured battle with leukaemia”.

1986 The March LCS concert with Colfe’s Chamber Choir and St George’s School Chapel Choir from Newport, Rhode Island is the American Sarah Connolly choir’s last event in their British tour during which they sang in Norwich, Peterborough, Shrewsbury, Uppingham, Oxford & St Giles’ Cripplegate.

The LCS Christmas concert is conducted by the choir’s regular accompanist James Thomas. James Carpenter, organ scholar at Colfe’s School, accompanies the choir on a 3-manual organ specially built for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Britain in 1982. This is on loan to St Mary’s, as the church’s own instrument is beyond repair. LCS by now has “vacancies in all parts especially sopranos”!

1987 The main work in our March concert in Southwark Anglican Cathedral is a firm choral favourite – the Requiem by Mozart.

1988 Aside from our usual weekly rehearsals, we prepare for our summer concert by advance performance of some of the music at an informal wine & cheese evening in May and – on the eve of the concert – as part of the Lewisham Arts Festival. The full programme is certainly an unusual assortment to say the least!

LCS sings Handel’s Messiah at its November concert ‘to almost a full house’ in Lewisham Theatre (later renamed as Broadway Theatre, Catford). The evening is described as ‘a record for a classical event’ in the Theatre.

1989 The Jamaican-born British bass baritone Willard (later Sir Willard) White – described by as ‘one of the great opera singers of the day’ – sings the role of Christus in the performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion put on by Colfe’s Willard White

School in the Royal Albert Hall in March. LCS members join choirs from five London & Home Counties schools; a total of 600 musicians take part.

At the time Sir Willard lives locally, in Montague Avenue, Brockley and is persuaded by Colin Howard (who teaches his son at Colfe’s) to become LCS’s President. Later this year he moves from the opera house to the theatre to appear in St Matthew Passion dress rehearsal in RAH the title role of Shakespeare’s Othello for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The then LCS Chair, Colin Nash, gives Sir Willard a lift after a choir committee meeting, as he was keen to get home early because of a rehearsal the next day; he had come to the meeting direct from a day’s filming at Elstree for the TV version of Trevor Nunn’s production. During the drive the singer/actor told Colin that when the taxi came to pick him and Ian McKellen (Iago in the play) up at Elstree, he made sure he sat at the back while ‘McKellen was stuck in front’!

James Thomas, LCS’s regular accompanist and Chorus Master, makes his last appearance with the choir in our May performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah before he leaves to take up a Director of Music post in Grantham. LCS now has around 50 members.

1990 LCS’s February concert is given in aid of the St George’s Bickley Development Fund, established to raise money to finance restoration work needed after last April’s disastrous fire at the church.

For LCS’s May performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius there is ‘an equally large audience’ as for our Messiah concert two years earlier. However this year’s event makes a financial loss, so a fund-raising ‘Messiah from Scratch’ is held in February 1992.

1991 LCS commissions Paul Richards – who has been a choir member for the last four years – to write his musical setting of words by Gerard Manley Hopkins, entitled Night Piece. We give the piece’s premiere in May.

1992 LCS membership is now around 60 singers so we can comfortably fit onto the altar podium in St Laurence’s for our March concert, when we give a repeat performance of Paul Richards’ Night Piece.

Our performance of Mozart’s C minor Mass in May is dedicated to the memory of John Davis, a founder member of SMS and the choir’s very first Chairperson. John holds this position from 1979 until 1987. His widow Elsie is the last SMS founder member to remain in the choir.

1993 LCS takes part in the second half of the concert organised by Colfe’s School in March. In the first half South African-born Stanley Glasser – composer-in-residence at Colfe’s for this year’s spring term – conducts his own Little Concerto for Orchestra, which he has dedicated to Colin Howard. The work had also been performed three years ago at Goldsmiths’ Great Hall when Archbishop Stanley Glasser with Colfe’s School pupils Desmond Tutu is made an Honorary Freeman of the borough. In 1991 Stanley retired from the Chair of Music at Goldsmiths and was made Emeritus Professor in Music of the University of London. His widow Liz now sings with LCS.

Colin Howard takes a year’s sabbatical to complete his studies to gain B.Mus and M.Mus degrees at Goldsmiths; his assistant Paul Harrison stands in for him. Penny Champion – then Penny Berryman – takes over from Colin Nash as LCS Chair.

1994 LCS is registered as a charity. In January Peter Wright, Organist & Director of Music of Southwark Cathedral, leads the LCS choral workshop in Forest Hill Friends Meeting House where we regularly rehearse. Peter was to retire in 2019 after thirty years at the cathedral.

Andrew Dutson takes over from Paul Harrison as LCS’s accompanist and Assistant Director of Music.

1995 LCS’s concert in March celebrates the tercentenary of the birth of Henry Purcell. The seventeenth century anthems we perform come from a special edition prepared from a manuscript in Purcell’s own hand.

Susan Bullock – “one of the world's most sought-after British dramatic sopranos” – is a soloist in a performance with us of Verdi’s Requiem in May. The chorus is made up of singers from Colfe’s and Andrew Dutson Prendergast Schools, Choral Society and LCS. The design on the concert programme’s front cover is drawn by a pupil of Colfe’s School.

For LCS’s concert in December the conductor and the tenor soloist forget to agree in advance the cuts to make in the performance of excerpts from Bach’s , so the long ‘da capo’ is sung Susan Bullock in full. That’s unfortunate, as – according to choir member Penny Berryman’s recollection – it’s so ‘perishingly cold’ in the church that the choir is shivering! We also sing for the first time music by a woman composer – Tu creasti Domine by Judith Bingham – an innovation we are to build on in the years to come.

1996 Anthony Wilson, Director of Music at Church of the Good Shepherd, Lee – and an LCS member – conducts excerpts from his own Requiem as part of LCS’s choral workshop in March. Dress for the choir at this event is ‘smart casual’.

For the Christmas concert LCS’s Chair, Penny Berryman, buys 400 mince pies from a Lewisham bakery as interval refreshments for the audience; no wine though, as alcohol is not allowed to be consumed in the church. So, despite the concert title (‘Rejoice and be Merry’) although we can rejoice, it’s perhaps not so easy to be merry!

1997 The concert in May marks Colin Howard’s farewell to LCS. After 17 years as its Director of Music, he returns to live in his native South Africa. In June Colin does however make one final appearance with LCS to conduct Mozart’s Requiem in Antony, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris which is twinned with Lewisham. The joint concert with local choirs marks the twinning’s 30th anniversary. As a thank-you for our French hosts’ hospitality, LCS also sings Reginald Jacques’ arrangement of Purcell’s Evening Rondeau from The Fairy Queen at the civic reception held after the concert. LCS now has 70 members aged between 19 and 82.

On 8 September Stefan Reid takes over as LCS’s new Director of Music and in December conducts the choir publicly for the first time.

1998 LCS’s membership has by now risen to over 75 singers.

1999 At LCS’s March concert Victoria’s Mass O quam gloriosum is performed in its liturgical context with sections interspersed with appropriate plainsong & organ pieces. LCS’s membership rises again – to over 90.

The young Scottish composer Martin Suckling is commissioned by LCS to write his setting of words based on verses from St Luke’s Gospel, entitled Do not be afraid. It is first performed at our Stefan Reid Christmas concert this year.

2000 LCS’s membership rises yet again – to over 100. The women’s concert dress code changes – from white blouses and long black skirts to all black – and is first used at the March concert. Penny Berryman steps down as Chair of LCS and Brenda Scanlan is elected at the AGM to take over from her.

Using funding from Lewisham & Waltham Forest Arts Councils, LCS and South West Essex Choir commission Jonathan Rathbone – a former member of the Swingle Singers – to write his Requiem for the Condemned Man, which the choirs premiere at their joint concerts on 24 June and 2 July. Through LCS member Clare Rowe permission was obtained to use – without charge – Sir Antony Gormley’s Man 1981 drawing as the illustration for the posters and programme cover for the concerts.

Dan Ludford-Thomas makes his first appearance with LCS, as tenor soloist in our December sell-out performance of Handel’s Messiah. Antony Gormley’s Man 1981

2001 At our June concert at Southwark’s Roman Catholic Cathedral we welcome back the internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Ameral Gunson as our soloist. In our archives is a flyer for a Good Friday performance of an abridged version of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in which Ameral sang as soloist – along with the equally renowned Welsh tenor Wynford Evans – when we went under the name of St Mary’s Singers, directed by Lewis Vincent. Unfortunately the year is not given but this concert must have been more than twenty years ago; on the flyer Ms Gunson’s first name is misspelt as ‘Amoral’. This was presumably only a typing mistake – rather than a judgement on the singer’s ethics! Our July concert is another celebration of the links between Lewisham and its French ‘twin’ Antony. LCS is joined by Antony’s Maîtrise Sainte- Marie choir to sing together Parry’s I was Glad, Tavener’s Song for Athene Ameral Gunson & Wynford Evans and the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah.

Composer Paul Patterson comes along to the dress rehearsal for LCS’s December concert when we perform his Magnificat.

2002 Dan Ludford-Thomas reappears with us in Southwark’s Roman Catholic cathedral as soloist in Bach’s St John Passion in March. And seven years later he was to be back again, this time as the choir’s new Director of Music!

Also in March, English National Opera revives on the stage Warner’s 2000 production of the St John Passion and LCS members Paul Patterson form part of the Community Chorus which The Guardian says “brings impressive heft to the chorales”. We sing these chorales from the boxes on either side of the proscenium, having been tutored in workshops by vocal coach Mary King; the audience is invited to join us in singing three of the chorales. Meanwhile, among the soloists on the stage is Mark Padmore, described in the Guardian review as “one of the world’s finest evangelists”. BBC TV makes a film of the production.

LCS’s Christmas concert is our first appearance with Bromley Boy Singers – and another sell-out!

003 A new LCS logo, designed by a choir member’s son, is produced by Lucid Graphics of New Oxford Street and a choir website is set up.

We sing Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom unaccompanied as part of our March concert. LCS Chair Brenda Scanlan recalls that it takes several weeks to persuade some choir members that it will be possible New LCS logo to master the Church Slavonic lyrics with a Latin script transliteration underneath on our scores – but we get there! In fact we are invited to give a second performance of the work this October in Holy Trinity Church, Clapham. Sadly however, before we can do so, Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan Anthony of the Russian Orthodox diocese of Sourozh – which covers Great Anthony of Sourozh Britain and Ireland – dies suddenly in August and with regret the organisers cancel the concert as they enter a period of mourning.

Penny Champion – née Berryman – remembers Guildford Philharmonic Choir’s concert in the town’s cathedral in May as being ‘hard work’; she says it was extremely difficult to hear other voice parts and to pick up cues – and the vertiginous staging was a challenge. 300 singers perform Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand – of whom half are drawn from LCS and the South West Essex Choir. They travel to Guildford by coach but later major problems on the M25 mean that many audience members fail to get to the concert.

In LCS’s concert in December we sing the London premiere of Naji Hakim’s . In 1993 the Lebanese-French organist and composer had succeeded Olivier Messiaen as organist of Paris’s Eglise de la Sainte-Trinité, a post he was to retain for fifteen years.

2004 In February LCS performs Mozart’s Requiem with the Orchestra of St Bartholomew – the resident orchestra at the newly refurbished Broadway Theatre in Catford – conducted by Robert Trory, director of the Sydenham International Music Festival. The orchestra is composed of local professional musicians from London’s leading orchestras. LCS alto Jane Knight says the 80 chorus members are “very tightly crammed into the limited space”. The original edifice here opened as a concert and dance hall in 1932 and has gone under three different names before bearing today’s title. Broadway Theatre, Catford

LCS’s concert in June is quite a linguistic mixture: the choir sings Janáček’s Our Father in the original Czech, Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine in French, the Hebrew words of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and the Latin text of Hakim’s Gloria. It’s left to the guest countertenor and tenor soloists to sing the evening’s only English words – the text of Britten’s canticle Abraham and Isaac. LCS Chair Brenda Scanlan says ‘this concert sticks in my mind very strongly as – about a week before the concert – it comes to my notice that no soloists have been booked. Stefan thinks he'd done this, but somehow his belief is stronger than his actions!’ So Brenda is left with the need to try and secure soloists who are confident about singing in Czech as well as in English. She spends an anxious few days calling on every favour she can through a range of networks, without success. Brenda adds: ‘Eventually as I drove into work the Wednesday before Saturday's concert, I took a call from a tenor who said he was free to come along and he had a friend he thought was available to join him as well. I was delighted and extremely relieved. I didn't know then how lucky I was because they performed brilliantly at the concert and have both gone on to great careers. Andy Staples and Tim Mead saved LCS's reputation that day and I'll be for ever grateful to them!’

LCS members take part in two events in October: first of all BBC Three’s Flashmob – The Opera, broadcast live on TV from Paddington Station and reported on by both The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. It is also now viewable on You Tube. And four days after Flashmob, we form part of the ENO Baylis community chorus of 500 amateur singers in three performances of a 45-minute précis of the history of the London Coliseum – a community opera entitled For the Public Good presented in preparation for the building’s centenary this December and to celebrate the building’s refurbishment. London’s Evening Standard writes of the “bustling energy and raucous good humour” of our performance.

The LCS concert in November is the first of two with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The choir and orchestra appear together again in November next year.

2005 We start the year by workshopping a song by the great English madrigalist John Wilbye at Sydenham High School, while at the same time we are learning a more jazzy setting of the same text by a contemporary English composer, John Rutter, in preparation for our Shakespeare concert in March. In July LCS members take part in this year’s Lewisham People’s Day by singing music by Orff and Vivaldi in Mountsfield Park.

2006 In July this year 35 LCS members return to the London Coliseum – on the stage this time – to sing music by the blind Anglo-American jazz pianist and composer George Shearing under Andrew Dutson’s direction. Our performance is part of ‘Sing!’, a celebration of the choral voice organised by ENO Baylis, the English National Opera’s education team and presented by the vocal coach Mary King. Eight other amateur choirs from as far away as Manchester also take turns in singing the party pieces they have prepared for the event.

LCS members are invited to participate over a period of 10 days in a production of Jonathan Dove’s community opera Tobias & the Angel, staged in October to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Young Vic Theatre and its reopening after having been dark for three years while the building is redesigned and rebuilt. We appear as ‘trees, mountains, river and angels’ hidden several floors up, far above the main stage. The Daily Telegraph speaks of “a superb choir drawn from the local community”. The Times adds that “the amateurs…are as much the stars of this superb piece as anyone else” while the British Theatre Guide says “these are truly among the most gorgeous choral sounds I have heard in forty years of opera-going”. Audience members during the run include Jude Law, Clive Owen, Joseph Fiennes, Bill Paterson, Mike Leigh, Michael Attenborough, Mark Rylance, Simon Hughes, Richard Stilgoe, Stephen Daldry, Peter Brook, Nicholas Hytner, Olivia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Sinéad Cusack, David Calder, Alice Eve, Caryl Churchill & Neil Pearson. We also sing in the premiere recording of the work, which Chandos releases on CD in 2010.

2007 In her report as LCS Chair to this year’s choir AGM in April, Brenda Scanlan describes 2007 as “one of the most stretching and fulfilling years” since she took up her post. We had given the choir website a new lease of life and, again in Brenda’s words, are “taken aback – though delighted! – by the number of new people who arrive in January”. Among the music which the previous month LCS had taken on for the first time was the mammoth 40-part motet Spem in Alium by the 16th century master Thomas Tallis, buried down the road in Greenwich. Hard work but we pulled it off!

LCS celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with three concerts: a performance of two great choral classics – Bach’s B minor Mass in June and Verdi’s Requiem in November, both in Blackheath Halls; and at Christmas we give our audience a flavour of a work entitled Happiness, written by Robert Percy as part of the Adopt-a-Composer project supported by the Society for the Promotion of New Music, Making Music and the Performing Rights Society. Tonight we premiere the work’s first movement, Jardin du Monde, a setting of the 16th century French words of a prophecy by Nostradamus.

2008 The year begins with music with an American slant; in March we sing by Glass, Whitacre, Barber and Copland plus Tippett’s arrangement of spirituals for his A Child of Our Time.

In July composer David Fanshawe joins us in person to give a talk on his African Sanctus before we perform this choral setting of the Latin Mass juxtaposed with the composer’s own live recordings made in East Africa. Sadly, David Fanshawe was to pass away exactly two years to the day after our concert.

Later in July LCS members are back at the Young Vic to form part of the chorus in a production of Weill’s Street Scene which would go on to win this year’s Evening Standard Award for Best Musical. David Fanshawe

In November fifty LCS members travel to Matlock to sing Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius with the Derbyshire Singers, a choir well known to our Director of Music Stefan, as he sang with them when at school in Ashbourne. The following weekend the two choirs sing the same work together again, this time down south in Blackheath.

In December we give the first complete performance of Robert Percy’s Happiness, part of which we previewed last year.

An Anglo-French chorus in Antony 2009 In May LCS is back across the Channel to sing with our French friends from Antony in the concert hall of the local music conservatoire.

After more than 12 years as LCS’s Director of Music, Stefan Reid leaves to take up an appointment at a school in Nottingham. In July he conducts us in his farewell concert in which, with members of the Brighton Festival Chorus, we sing music by John Rutter and .

And in September LCS’s autumn term rehearsals begin with our new Director of Music, Dan Ludford-Thomas – who in November directs our performance of Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Handel’s . As one of our soprano soloists we also welcome for the first time Helen Meyerhoff, also known as Mrs Ludford-Thomas!

2010 In its ‘Classical meets Jazz’ concert in March LCS first introduces its regular audience to the music of Will Todd with a performance of his Mass in Blue supported by the composer himself at the keyboard and his wife Dan Ludford-Thomas Bethany Halliday as soprano soloist. This is LCS’s first appearance at the Great Hall of Goldsmiths, University of London. Will Todd

In June it’s the turn of our friends from Antony to join us in London to sing music from both sides of the Channel. The proceeds from the concert go to the Lavender Trust, which raises money to fund information & support for younger women with breast cancer. Sir Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham, gives a short speech to welcome our French visitors.

2011 In September another return visit to the Young Vic for a repeat of the Opera Group/Young Vic co-production of Street Scene, recorded excerpts from which are broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December. London se1 community website writes that “Lewisham Choral Society provides extra singing power [which] makes for an incredibly powerful sound”. Around 90 LCS singers participate in a much longer run than our previous visits to this theatre. Some of us take part in up to 12 performances in succession in order to make sure we have sufficient singers each time. Hard work - but rewarding!

2012 In March LCS and its friends from Hackney Singers make their Southbank Centre debut with a performance of Messiah in the Royal Festival Hall under the baton of our Director of Music, Dan Ludford-Thomas, who is also the Hackney choir’s Assistant Director of Music. The orchestra is the Forest Philharmonic from Walthamstow, which will appear in many more of our concerts in the years to come.

In June, after a sell-out performance in the baroque splendour of the central Paris church of St Louis-en-L’Île, LCS finds itself with our friends from Antony singing the Hallelujah Chorus as an encore at five minutes to midnight!

It’s the year of the London Olympic & Paralympic Games and LCS is participating in three events: first of all, early one morning in July, choir members gather outside St Laurence’s, Catford – our usual rehearsal venue – to greet the Olympic Torch with music as it passes by. Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen, is one of the torch bearers as it travels through Lewisham.

A week later LCS provides the chorus for the finale of SingOut! – one of the Lewisham Big Screen events to mark the Games – in a magnificent, decorated Spiegeltent installed on the heath at Blackheath.

And exactly one month later around one hundred LCS Spiegeltent on the heath members are lined up in our blue costumes and clear plastic ‘shoulder fans’ ready to enter the vast arena of the Olympic Stadium in Stratford. With members of four other London choirs we are due to sing the world premiere performance of Principia, written by Belize- born British composer Errollyn Wallen as part of the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games. The arena is filled to the brim with an audience of 80,000 and the ceremony is watched live on TV by 11 million in the UK and countless others across the planet. We also sing what the Press calls “a stirring rendition” of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the National Anthem before HM the Queen herself, together with many other Heads of State and Government and other VIPs. We had been rehearsing for many weeks, including a session in a vast Ford Motor Company car park in Dagenham, used a short time earlier by the Spice Girls to rehearse for their appearance at the Olympic Games closing ceremony. The evening ends as, with all the participants and athletes, we swarm back onto the arena to become the backing chorus to Beverley Knight’s rendition of I am what I am.

Our concert in November includes the first public appearance with the choir of Nico de Villiers – as piano soloist in a performance of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. Nico has in fact been a frequent accompanist for the choir at rehearsals and has shared the job of Assistant Director of Music with Andrew Dutson since

2009.

2013 LCS now has over 150 members. We give a ‘special welcome’ to tenors and basses wanting to join the choir in order to ensure a balance between higher and lower voices.

We say goodbye to our Assistant Director of Music Andrew Nico de Villiers Dutson after 19 years with LCS, as he appears in March in his last concert with us to play piano solos by Chopin and Gershwin. He is moving to New York on a five year posting.

In July the Australian composer John Carmichael is present at our first concert in Chelsea’s Cadogan Hall to hear Nico play three of his piano miniatures entitled Hommages. LCS sings music by Janácek, Whitacre and Bernstein.

Two months later seventy members of LCS take part in a workshop at Goldsmiths with the early music vocal ensemble Stile Antico – organised by LCS Stile Antico bass Chris Brasted.

2014 We’re back with our friends from the Derbyshire Singers, singing Verdi’s Requiem together – first of all in March in

Croydon’s Fairfield Halls and then in April in Matlock.

Verdi in Derbyshire In July we’re back in the Cadogan Hall and two composers are present for our concert: Cecilia McDowall, whose 4 piano solos Nico de Villiers plays and James Whitbourn, whose Luminosity we sing, along with music by Vaughan Williams.

The programme for LCS’s November concert says we now have almost 200 members and are taking singers in all voice parts. Cecilia McDowall & James Whitbourn

Later in the same month we are invited by Welsh pharmaceutical entrepreneur and composer Christopher Wood to take part in a workshop rehearsal and performance of his Requiem at St Laurence’s, Catford.

2015 In January more than 20 LCS members join singers from other South London choirs in a scratch rehearsal and performance at All Saints, Blackheath of Part I of Handel’s Messiah – plus the Hallelujah chorus – in aid of the church’s organ restoration fund. We are directed by LCS’s old friend Ben , a former Director of Music at All Saints. In March we tackle the second part of Messiah back in Blackheath.

Also in March, Scratch Messiah in Blackheath our second joint Royal Festival Hall concert with Hackney Singers consists of music by Brahms and a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, given by our 300 singers under the baton of the north London choir’s Director of Music Mark Shanahan.

In May our own Dan Ludford- Mozart Requiem in RFH Thomas is one of six conductors who take us through a special performan ce of Will Todd’s Mass A colourful chorus for a Mass in Blue in Blue, put on as a Come and Sing event in St John’s Smith Square to raise funds for the Rainbow Trust

children’s charity. LCS members are among choral singers from around the UK and beyond, who fill the Carmina at Cadogan church concert hall to bursting. Will Todd himself is at the keyboard and is joined by his wife the soprano Bethany Halliday.

In July in Cadogan Hall Sydenham High School Choir join us in ’s Carmina Burana.

In November our concert programme compiler Martin Bull has to do quite a bit research – even resorting to consulting a Rossini biography in Italian on the shelves of Victoria Music Library – to clarify the story of the different versions of the three Rossini motets we are due to sing in our concert in Goldsmiths’ Great Hall.

For the third year running, some LCS members take up an offer to join our friend Caroline Lenton- Ward and her Sydenham High School Choir in the LCS sing Rossini & Cherubini at Goldsmiths Royal Albert Hall. There we sing in a Christmas with the Stars evening organised to raise funds for the charity Bloodwise, which supports people affected by blood cancer.

Christmas with LCS in Holy Trinity In our own Christmas concert – our first appearance in the beautiful church of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, dubbed by Sir John Betjeman ‘the cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement’ – we celebrate both the life of Sir David Willcocks – who died in September – and the 70th birthday of Sir David’s fellow writer and arranger of carols John Rutter, by singing a number of those carols tonight.

Martin Bull does some more digging to discover the identity of the composer of the carol Make we joy. He finds that there are no less than five contemporary composers called David Morgan and his search involves much correspondence, even with the Australian Music Centre in New South Wales. But the correct David Morgan lives closer to home, in Norfolk, and is delighted that we are giving his piece an airing.

Mendelssohn in Croydon 2016 More joint concerts with our friends from Derbyshire when in March we sing Mendelssohn’s Elijah, first in Matlock, then in Croydon. The husband of long-standing LCS member Penny Champion discovers a link between members of his mother’s family, the Holts of Liverpool, and . In a letter from George Holt to his mother in 1842 he writes of a horse ride with “young Mendelssohn…as far as Charlottenburg”. And Charlottenburg- Wilmersdorf is the suburb of Berlin that is now twinned with Lewisham!

In June fifteen LCS members take a leap into punk with Australian conductor Kelly Lovelady and post-punk band The Membranes. Our appearance in the sold- out gig – at a pub on the Pentonville Road – is set up by LCS soprano Viv Cosby and she and her fellow singers prepare a performance LCS doing punk at The Lexington of Tavener’s Song for Athene which Kelly breaks into chunks and intersperses them throughout The Membrane’s set list. Rock at Night magazine says that “the combination of punk music and melodic choir…proved to be almost a sensory overload” and “this unique show…was an absolute adrenaline rush”.

Our performance of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb in July has a special poignancy for the conductor, our Director of Music Dan Ludford-Thomas. The piece was commissioned in 1943 for St Matthew’s Church, Northampton and it was as a chorister there in 1986 that Dan – who remembers singing Britten’s work with great affection – was named Choirboy of the Year.

We are saddened to lose choir stalwart Maurice Hearn who died this year. Many of us remember with affection his weekly cry at rehearsals of “Don’t forget the raffle”.

St Laurence’s, Catford: Johannischer Chor Berlin and LCS In October the choral links between Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Lewisham are cemented by a visit to our borough by 60 singers from the Johannischer Chor Berlin, when LCS joins with them in their concert in Catford as part of their UK tour and invites them to an English afternoon tea in St Laurence’s church hall. The choirs sing separately and then combine to perform a song by William Byrd. Lewisham Councillor Obajimi Adefiranye gives a welcoming speech for our German visitors.

In November our Assistant Director of Music, Nico de Villiers, makes his first appearance as a concerto soloist in an LCS concert, when he plays Mozart’s Elvira Madigan piano concerto.

2017 In March we are back at the Royal Festival Hall for our third joint concert there with Hackney Singers – a performance of Bach’s B minor Mass – under Dan Ludford-Thomas, now appearing as Director of Music of both choirs. On this occasion they are also joined by Welsh soprano soloist Elin Manahan Thomas, who like us had appeared five years earlier in the Olympic Stadium for the Paralympic Games opening ceremony. On that occasion Elin sang Handel’s Elin Manahan Thomas Eternal Source of Light Divine, a performance she was to repeat at next year’s Royal Wedding. Our orchestra for the Bach is the London Mozart Players, ‘the UK’s first chamber orchestra’.

In July we sing music from central and Eastern Europe, including two pieces by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. In 1998 LCS soprano Catherine Peters got to know the composer in person through her job and, as Catherine herself says, “his music made a mark on my life…and continues to mean so much to me”. So much indeed that when her son was born in 2010 she named him Arvo and, on moving to Lewisham, she joined LCS on learning that we were planning Baby Arvo to sing Pärt’s choral music.

In September some LCS singers take part in a production by Mahogany Opera Group at the Yard Theatre in Hackney of Mozart vs Machine, which is described as ‘an electronic essay collage opera’ and ‘a high octane mash-up of Mozart opera, electronic sound and video projection, bringing some of history’s most iconic artists together in a theatrical sci-fi- gameshow encounter’! LCS alto Jane Knight says LCS singers “take part as the ‘jury’ at Mozart’s trial by way of interjections, reactions to proceedings, dancing, sitting whilst bouncing on space hoppers and general tomfoolery with chorus verses thrown in”!

In December – for the ninth year in a row – LCS members sing carols for charity in front of the Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the annual gifting of such a tree by the city of Oslo to the people of Britain, as thanks for our help to Norway during WWII. In 1947 the mother of LCS soprano Penny Champion sang in the choir which inaugurated the tradition of Yuletide singing in front of the tree.

Aside from Trafalgar Square, over the years LCS has sung Christmas carols for charity at: St Thomas’ Hospital; Lewisham Shopping Centre; Waterloo, Victoria, Lewisham and Blackheath railway stations; and Canada Water Overground station. We have also sung carols at Brockley Farmers Market, and Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster.

2018 On the day of our performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in March we learn that the mezzo-soprano soloist we had booked is unable to appear. At very short notice Janet Shell, travelling through very bad weather, steps into the breach and gives a wonderful rendition of the Angel. “If it weren’t for Gerontius, I wouldn’t be here”. So writes LCS tenor Kath Geraghty in recounting her family links with Elgar’s masterpiece. For Kath’s grandparents Philip and Katie had first met in 1911 while on a six-month world Philip, Katie and Sir Edward choir tour later described as “one of the most remarkable events in British choral history”. A tour highlight was the Canadian premiere of The Dream of Gerontius, conducted by the composer himself.

And sixty years after the tour LCS bass John Chisholm, as a Cambridge undergraduate, was to sing the work in Cambridge and Aldeburgh under the baton of another illustrious

English composer, Benjamin Britten. In April, fifty-five LCS members join with our friends from Johannischer Chor Berlin to give the opening concert of the 25th annual Blankensee Summer Music Festival which also marks the 50th anniversary of the twinning of the communities of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Lewisham. First of all our hosts give us a welcoming reception in Charlottenburg which includes speeches by the local Bürgermeister and by LCS member Councillor Stella Jeffrey – and an amazing buffet prepared by members of the German choir.

For the concert the next day we travel to a church on the borders of a nature reserve thirty miles south of Berlin where we sing to a packed audience of over 400 people. Our choir sings music by Haydn, Rütti and Mozart under the direction of our Assistant Director of Music, Nico de Villiers, who also plays a piano solo piece by Mozart. The music sung by our host choir includes two psalm settings by their conductor Jens Lehmann who directs the choir. And finally the two choirs combine for Local paper’s report on concert a performance of William Byrd’s Look Down O Lord, which we sang together in London two years ago.

By July LCS membership has risen to over 200 singers. We make our debut appearance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, where we highlight music by Jonathan Dove. In researching for the concert programme we discover that three LCS members – tenor Andy Scripture plus basses John Connor & John Griffith – attended the same school (St Joseph’s Academy in Blackheath) as Jonathan, who Jonathan Dove we’re delighted to say is able to join the audience tonight. Also here is fellow composer James Lark; our friends The Bromley Boy Singers give a sparkling performance of his Broadside Ballads. To represent the American side of this transatlantic concert our own Nico de Villiers and our friend James Orford perform the two piano version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and among the choral pieces is the heart- rending When David heard by Eric Whitacre. LCS soprano Annie Rimmer says it means so much to her to at last be able to sing this piece tonight, having previously only experienced it

as an LCS audience member.

November brings an all-Dvořák concert for LCS. We discover that during his nine visits to Britain the Czech composer had often stayed in our borough, at the magnificent Westwood House in Sydenham as the guest of his publisher.

In December we sing the choral fantasy on old carols which composer entitled Christmas Day. We also find an historical link between Holst and an LCS member. Horace, the grandfather of second alto Barbara Smith, was a soldier at the end of WWI in 1918, at the time based in Greece & Turkey. It was there that he had the chance to play in a small orchestra and to sing madrigals in a choir, both under the direction of Gustav Holst, Horace & Gustav who was there to organise the musical education of troops before their demobilisation. Horace described the composer as ‘a very lovable man’.

2019 In March LCS and Hackney Singers are back in the Royal Festival Hall for another joint concert, accompanied again by London Mozart Players, who this year celebrate their 70th anniversary. We sing choral music by Brahms and Mozart and Nico de Villiers is soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto.

In July LCS is invited to lead the singing of five hymns at the sixty third Borough of Lewisham Annual Memorial Service at Hither Green Crematorium in the presence of Damien Egan, Mayor of Lewisham.

Later in July LCS uses a new concert venue for the choir – Langley Park Centre for the Performing Arts – in Beckenham. We are introduced to the music of Bob Chilcott – and the man himself – as he takes one of our Monday evening rehearsals to prepare us to sing his Requiem at the concert. The evening is dedicated to LCS bass Bob Kaye who sadly passed away in January (several LCS members sang at his funeral) and includes music by a Bob Chilcott taking an LCS rehearsal of his Requiem particular favourite of Bob’s: Ralph Vaughan Williams (RVW). We uncover some links between Vaughan Williams and Lewisham and with current LCS members. RVW wrote and arranged incidental music to accompany a scene mounted by the Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham at Crystal Palace as part of the 1911 Pageant of London celebrating George V’s coronation. And Myfanwy, aunt of the husband of LCS soprano Helen Pickstone, as a young woman met RVW and the two occasionally corresponded. Myfanwy was proud owner of a signed photo which RVW gave her and she passed it to her nephew who still has it today. And LCS second tenor Andrew Grant sang as a schoolboy in the 1955 premiere of Myfanwy’s signed RVW photo RVW’s Hodie in the composer’s presence.

In October several LCS members participate with choral singers from all over the country in an event called Sing for Shelter which entails the recording of a song by Alex Woolf entitled A Place to Call Home as a charity single for Shelter. While we all sing from the packed auditorium of the capital’s largest West End theatre, the London Coliseum, we are joined on the stage by the English National Opera chorus and bass baritone Sir Bryn Terfel with sopranos Lesley Garrett and Alice Coote. To explain why she supports Shelter and this event Alice also recounts from the stage the very moving but ultimately happy story The Coliseum filled with singers of her brother with whom she lost touch for many years when he was living on the streets.

In November LCS sings ’s ’s Feast for the first time – in the newly refurbished, and newly renamed, Phoenix Concert Hall in Croydon’s Fairfield Halls. Alice Coote, Bryn Terfel & Lesley Garrett

LCS tenor Martin Bull recalls an unexpected encounter with Sir William Walton in 1977 which allowed him to ask the composer to sign his concert programme. Walton obliges and so begins Martin’s collection of composers’ autographs which now numbers over 600! Before the Walton cantata our friends from Forest Philharmonic Orchestra play Elgar’s Enigma Variations. In this Walton’s autograph work we find an historical link between the story behind the music and one of our choir’s members. Lady Mary Trefusis, née Lygon – the grandmother of LCS soprano Morwenna Orton – got to know as a private piano Lady Mary – Elgar’s ‘***’? pupil of the composer. After putting his work together as a theme with fourteen variations, he enigmatically dedicated the penultimate of these with the Miriam McLeod marking ‘***’. This is thought to represent Morwenna’s grandmother.

Long-standing LCS member and lifelong peace campaigner Miriam McLeod left a generous legacy to the choir when she died in 2015. This enabled LCS to commission a work for us to sing at our Christmas concert in celebration of Miriam’s life. The result is Kate Whitley’s In My Way, a setting of Miriam’s own Kate Whitley own words which Kate sees as best capturing what Miriam stood for. Kate comes along to a couple of rehearsals to give us advice on how best to perform her piece. Among other music we sing in tonight’s programme is Arthur Sullivan’s adaptation of the traditional melody for It came upon the midnight clear. In his early 20s Sullivan took rooms above a shop in Sydenham in order for him to pursue a secret relationship with two sisters who lived nearby.

LCS in Eltham Palace 2020 We rehearse for a performance in March of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Earlier in the month however we are given the opportunity to sing excerpts from the work in a building built around 150 years before this music was written: the medieval Great Hall of Eltham Palace. Incidentally, the scores we are using were published by King’s Music, a company set up by the late Clifford Bartlett, who was born in Sydenham to parents who both worked for Lewisham Council. So an (admittedly tenuous) link between Monteverdi and Lewisham!

And then…within days of our planned concert in Queen Elizabeth Hall – for which we sell over 500 tickets – coronavirus arrives and the event cannot take place. TO BE CONTINUED…

A selection of the striking poster designs by LCS member Ben Leslie

OUR CONCERT & OTHER EVENT VENUES In the Borough of Lewisham:  Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Lewisham  Parish Church of St Hilda, Crofton Park  Lewisham Town Hall Extension > Lewisham Concert Hall > Lewisham Theatre > Broadway Theatre, Catford  Parish Church of St Swithun, Hither Green  Parish Church of St Laurence, Catford  Parish Church of St Peter, Brockley  Parish Church of St Stephen, Lewisham  Parish Church of St Andrew, Catford  Forest Hill Friends Meeting House  Parish Church of St John, Deptford  Parish Church of St Paul, Deptford  Parish Church of St Bartholomew, Sydenham  Sydenham High School  Mountsfield Park, Catford  Kilmorie , Forest Hill  Great Hall, Goldsmiths, University of London  Spiegeltent, Blackheath heath  Parish Church of All Saints, Blackheath  Hither Green Crematorium Outside the Borough:  Parish Church of St John, Sidcup  Parish Church of St Andrew, Coulsdon  Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie (Southwark Anglican Cathedral)  Parish Church of St Alfege, Greenwich  Concert Hall > Phoenix Hall, Fairfield Halls, Croydon  Colfe’s School, Lee  Cathédrale Saint-Vincent-de-Saragosse, Saint-Malo, France  Royal Albert Hall  Christ Church, Chislehurst  Holy Trinity Convent, Bromley  Parish Church of St George, Beckenham  Great Hall, Blackheath Halls  Eglise Saint-Saturnin, Antony, France  Walthamstow Assembly Hall  The Metropolitan Cathedral Church of St George (Southwark Roman Catholic Cathedral)  London Coliseum  The Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, Guildford  London Paddington Railway Station  Parish Church of St Francis of Assisi, West Wickham  Young Vic Theatre, Waterloo  Highfields School, Matlock  Auditorium Paul Arma, Conservatoire Darius Milhaud, Antony, France  Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre  Eglise St-Jean-Porte-Latine, Antony, France  Eglise St Louis-en-L’Île, Paris, France  Olympic Stadium, Stratford  Cadogan Hall, Chelsea  St John’s, Smith Square  The Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Upper Chelsea (Holy Trinity, Sloane Square)  The Lexington, Pentonville Road  The Yard, Hackney  Kirchenzentrum Waldfrieden,Blankensee, Germany  Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre  Langley Park Centre for the Performing Arts, Beckenham  Great Hall, Eltham Palace OUR REGULAR MONDAY EVENING REHEARSAL VENUES 1950-mid 60s Elfrida Hall, Ladywell Mid 60s-1990 St Mary’s Lewisham Church of England Primary School, Ladywell 1990-1999 Friends Meeting House, Sunderland Road, Forest Hill 1999-2005 Methodist Church, Stanstead Road, Forest Hill 2005-2009 Kilmorie Primary School, Kilmorie Road, Forest Hill 2009- St Laurence’s Church, Catford DIRECTORS OF MUSIC, ACCOMPANISTS, CHORUS MASTERS Lewis Vincent SMS Director of Music (DofM) from 1950 to 1979. Lewis was a pupil at Wilson’s Grammar School in and a choirboy at St Agnes’ Church, Kennington. He learnt to play the organ there and at Trinity College of Music. After several minor appointments, at the age of 17 he became organist of St Paul’s, Deptford, where he developed his abilities in choir training. During the war he served in the RAF and eventually became DofM at RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire. After the war, he returned briefly to Deptford before moving to St Michael’s, East Wickham. In 1950 he was appointed organist & choirmaster of St Mary’s, Lewisham and founded SMS, of which he remained DofM for 29 years. In 1953 he was also named Musical Director of Lewisham Arts Council. After leaving St Mary’s in 1979 he went on to use his musical talents at St Giles’ Church, Farnborough in Kent. Geoffrey Mussard SMS rehearsal accompanist who, in late 1979, briefly took over as DofM until the arrival of Colin Howard. Geoff is now Organist & Choir Director at the West Wickham parish churches of St Mary of Nazareth and of St Francis of Assisi and the Musical Director of West Wickham Choir. Colin Howard DofM at Colfe’s School from 1979 and DofM of SMS (& then LCS) from January 1980 to June 1997. Colin was born in 1945 and educated in Cape Town, South Africa. He came to England in 1964 to study organ and piano at the Royal College of Music (RCM). He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, an Associate of the RCM and Assistant Organist at HM Chapel Royal in the Tower of London. He taught at schools in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire before moving to Colfe’s. He returned to South Africa after the end of apartheid, taught music at the South African College of Music and coached for the opera company in Cape Town, where he died of cancer in May 2008. James Thomas Assistant DofM at Colfe’s School, Assistant Organist at St Margaret’s, Lee and regular accompanist and Chorus Master for LCS from 1985 to July 1989, when he was appointed DofM at King’s School, Grantham and Organist at Grantham Parish Church. Paul Harrison Assistant DofM at Colfe’s School from 1979 and Organist & Choirmaster at St Andrew’s, Catford. Paul was LCS accompanist from 1989 to 1993 and then its Acting DofM during Colin Howard’s year-long sabbatical, before taking up an appointment as DofM at Barnard Castle School, County Durham; since 2006 he has been DofM at the City of London School. Andrew Dutson Assistant DofM at Colfe’s School from 1994, when he succeeded Paul Harrison as LCS’s accompanist and became their Assistant DofM. Born in Hereford, where he attended Belmont Abbey and Hereford Cathedral Schools and studied organ with Dr Roy Massey – Organist & Master of the Choristers at the Cathedral for 27 years – and at Birmingham Conservatoire. Andrew became Organ Scholar at Lichfield Cathedral, gained his ARCO & ABSM diplomas and a BA (Hons) degree. He was an experienced recitalist and became DofM at Wimbledon High School and then Head of the Expressive Arts Faculty at Sydenham High School. In 2013 he took up a five- year posting to New York. Stefan Reid DofM of LCS from September 1997 to 2009. Stefan began conducting at school in Derbyshire and continued by directing his college orchestra and choir at Oxford. He conducted the University’s Arcadian Singers at home and abroad before obtaining a second degree at Surrey University. He taught at Forest School, Snaresbrook in Essex and became DofM of South West Essex Choir, of St John the Divine, Kennington, of the Selwyn Singers, of St Mary’s, South Woodford and of South Hampstead High School. Nico de Villiers South African-born pianist, coach and researcher; LCS accompanist and Assistant DoM from 2009. He holds degrees from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the University of Michigan and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Nico is a coach on the vocal faculty of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as well as a visiting coach at the Royal College of Music. Dan Ludford-Thomas DofM of LCS from 2009. He was a chorister at St Matthew’s, Northampton and won Choirboy of the Year in 1986. He was a choral scholar at Wells and Durham Cathedrals and studied music at Durham University. He is Musical Director of the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain and Head of Vocal Studies at Dulwich College, Musical Director of Concordia Chamber Choir and Musical Director of The Hackney Singers. CHOIR CHAIRS John Davis Chair 1979-1987 Penny Berryman Chair 1993-2000 Colin Nash Chair 1987-1993 Brenda Scanlan Chair 2000-

With my special thanks for their help & contributions to

Anne Vincent Alan Vincent Chris Stringfellow Penny Champion Stella Jeffrey Mike Kerin Jane Knight Trevor Jarvis Brenda Scanlan Colin Nash

and for assistance from Chris Brasted, Gary Iles, Sue Schiavi, Phil Newsam, Mary Lee & Jim Toohill

M.R.C.B.