Christmas with the Linsdale Singers

Saturday 6th December 2014 at 7.30pm
St Barnabas Church, Linslade, Leighton Buzzard

The Singers were delighted to have been invited back to St Barnabas Church to give their 2014 end-of-year concert as part of the Church’s Christmas Tree Festival, and also pleased to have been able to raise much needed funds for the restoration of the Church’s organ. For many years the Linsdale Singers had given concerts in St Barnabas and they have always been made very welcome.

Being surrounded by so many Christmas trees gave the Singers the perfect excuse for a traditional Christmas concert. However, as the concert was actually only just into Advent, the first half had an Advent flavour, and it was not until the second half that they really let themselves have ‘a merry little Christmas’! Even then, they shied away from the more popular Christmas carols such as ‘O come all ye faithful’, as it was felt the audience would have plenty of opportunity to sing these in the following few weeks leading up to Christmas.

In 2010 when they last gave a Christmas concert in St Barnabas, through a generous grant from the Leighton Linslade Arts Forum the Singers were able to purchase sets of some relatively new Christmas pieces – both original compositions and fresh arrangements of the old favourites – and some of these were also included in the concert.

Over the previous few years, Dennis Pim, the Choir’s Conductor and Musical Director had each year composed a short original Christmas piece. The concert thus featured the first performance of his piece for 2014, The Burning Babe. The words to this piece are by the 16th century poet Robert Southwell and are a macabre vision of a winter’s Christmas Eve where the infant Jesus appears in the sky burning in agony for the sins of man. The concert also featured three of Dennis’s original compositions from previous years – ‘Prophecy’, O magnum mysterium and ‘Christ is born!’.

The Singers were joined by their regular organist, Paul Daggett, who as well as accompanying the choir in some of the choral items also delighted the audience with two seasonal organ solos.

Admission to the concert was £10, with accompanied children under 16 going free. All the proceeds were donated to the Church’s organ restoration appeal.

Venue details   •   Concert poster   •   List of music   •   Church website