The Choir of Pilgrim Church is proud to partner with the St Peter’s Cathedral Music Foundation to support the inaugural Adelaide Sacred Music Composition Prize, 2023. There are two prizes, in two sections for composers aged over 21, and young composers aged under 21, with prize money totalling $3,000 and recording and concert opportunities for... Continue Reading →
Our organ scholar improvising
Since Easter Sunday, Pilgrim is fortunate to have Val Estrella as our Organ Scholar. He mentioned he likes improvising, so we thought we'd let him have a go on Pentecost Sunday on the plainchant Veni Creator Spiritus. We're glad we did! Val will also be improvising the postlude after our next evensong, this coming Saturday... Continue Reading →
June evensong
We're preparing for our next evensong, 5pm Saturday 3 June. The setting will be Stanford in G. The last time we sang this was in Westminster Abbey, where we're pictured in the cloisters before filing in to rehearse. Luckily we've got these photos, because we do sometimes wonder whether it was all real! Photo: Alison... Continue Reading →
2022-23 English Cathedrals Tour
We have put together a video of our tour of England earlier this year – this is a shortened version of the ‘movie’ we showed after our April 1st evensong. In it we have tried to capture what it was like singing services in famous English cathedrals, and what that meant to our choristers. A... Continue Reading →
Where the King will be crowned
Photography is not permitted in Westminster Abbey, however after singing evensong there on December 30 last year, we were allowed a group photo. The verger looking after us mentioned that just behind the steps we were posing on was the precise spot on which Charles III would be crowned: the newly restored Cosmati Pavement mosaic,... Continue Reading →
Preparing for our May 6 ‘coronation’ evensong
We got to prepare for evensong in some pretty amazing places on our recent tour of England; none more so than Westminster Abbey. Here we are in an ‘upper room’ somewhere off Dean’s Yard in the Abbey complex, warming up before our rehearsal in the choir stalls. Now we are preparing for an evensong with... Continue Reading →
Jonathan Dove: Finding the right words
At our ANZAC Day evensong (5pm Tuesday April 25) the anthem will be ‘They will rise’ by Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) written for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the RAF, which was commemorated in Westminster Abbey in 2018. We first sang it at our ANZAC Day evensong in 2021, to commemorate the centenary... Continue Reading →
Dove: They will rise
We will be singing the anthem ‘They will rise’ by Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) at our ANZAC Day evensong (5pm Tuesday April 25). Here is a snippet from when we sang this piece a couple of years ago. It is an exhilarating work to sing and play: ‘They will rise, they will soar, they will... Continue Reading →
ANZAC Day Evensong
At our ANZAC Day evensong service, 5pm Tuesday 25 April, we will be singing the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in D by George Dyson (1883-1964) and the anthem ‘They will rise’ by Jonathan Dove (b. 1959). Please note the time this year is 5pm, to align with our other evensong services.
Preparing for our ANZAC Day evensong
In the photo the choir is in the Song School of Hereford Cathedral, rehearsing for our evensong there on December 29th last year. A very special element of our choir tour was the behind-the-scenes experience of everyday life in an English cathedral with daily choral services. Now we are preparing for our ANZAC Day evensong,... Continue Reading →