Concerts & Events
Eastbourne Choral Society celebrates
English Choral Music with Brass Ensemble
Handel: Zadok the Priest - Rutter: Gloria - Chilcott: Salisbury Vespers - Advent Carols
Saturday 29th November, starting at 4.30pm
Eastbourne Choral Society is delighted to announce its next concert, which will be at All Saints’ Church on Saturday 29th November. Continuing the choir’s successful scheduling of wintertime concerts in the afternoon rather than the evening, the concert will start at 4.30pm.
This concert will feature Handel: Zadok the Priest; Rutter: Gloria; Chilcott: Salisbury Vespers, along with well-known carols in which choir and audience can join together in a celebration of Advent. Under its Musical Director John Hancorn, and with regular accompanist Nicholas Houghton plus young singers from Chichester University Conservatoire, the choir is very pleased to welcome back The Meantime Brass Collective. Led by Alexander Hancorn – son of the choir’s Musical Director – this seven-piece brass ensemble, plus a drummer, will once again bring their own distinctive style and flair to the choir’s festive concert. The ensemble first met and began playing together while studying at Greenwich College: hence their joyous and very fitting name!
Handel’s Zadok the Priest is the most generally well-known of his Four Coronation Anthems, memorably performed when the televising of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation was a breathtaking novelty, and now a perennial favourite with choirs and audiences alike. Similarly, John Rutter’s vibrant Gloria, first performed in 1974, has become a cornerstone of modern choral repertoire.
Continuing this celebration of both traditional and modern English choral music, Salisbury Vespers by modern composer Bob Chilcott was first performed in 2009 in Salisbury cathedral. It reflects the cathedral’s dedication to the Virgin Mary and includes texts and motets in her praise, making it particularly suited to performance for Advent. Described by the composer as a concert work based on the ancient evening service of Vespers, this work completes the diversity of form and style encompassed in Eastbourne Choral Society’s concert for Advent 2025.
Tickets for this concert, price £15, are available from The Eastbourne Visitor Centre, at www.wegottickets.com, or at the door. (Students and accompanied children free.) Further details can be found at www.eastbournechoralsociety.org.uk.