La Nuit de Noël
December 6th 2025
St John’s Kirk
7.30pm
Chansons, Perth’s Chamber Choir, Christmas Concert featured Rossini’s ‘La Nuit de Noël’, a musical retelling of the Christmas Story. In a varied programme that carried a distinct Christmas theme, we sang the delicate harmonies of the Renaissance with pieces by Palestrina and Tomas de Victoria before travelling through the musical ages to perform pieces by two of the country’s leading contemporary female composers Cecillia McDowall and Sally Beamish. The programme included a performance of Schubert’s much loved Mass in G when Chansons was joined by our good friends Colleen Nicoll (soprano), David Douglas (tenor) and Phil Gault (bass) with Howard Duthie on the organ.
Autumn Concert
September 13 2025
St John’s Kirk
7.30pm
Written in 2003 in response to a commission by Hertfordshire Chorus, and originally premiered under the title Jazz Mass, Will Todd’s Mass in Blue is a brilliant blend of driving jazz grooves and clear, strong, choral writing against which the solo piano and solo soprano voice weave and blend in a delightful aural tapestry.
Mass in Blue was the climax to a concert that lead the audience through the works of various composers from Vaughan Williams to Gjeilo, each exploring different musical styles and harmonic structures that illustrated the power and emotion of the human voice. There was humour too, the concert opening with Bernstein’s Choral Warm-up Canon written originally as a warm-up for singing his Mass.
The ‘Dark Eyed Sailor’ and ‘The Lover’s Ghost’ by Vaughan Williams, published in 1913, took us back to a time when songs were sung as part of the common culture, at work, in the street, in the home and in the pubs. We have Vaughan Williams to thank for preserving so much of England’s folk songs and making them accessible through his much loved arrangements.
Chansons then took us forward to the modern day by performing pieces by Whitacre, Esenvalds and Gjeilo, global names in the modern choral repertoire with their compositions being applauded for their beauty and elegance.
As a prelude to Todd’s Mass in Blue we had Gershwin’s entertaining and much loved ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ that gave us a hint of the jazz styles to be explored by Todd in his Mass.
Todd’s Mass in Blue reflects not only the composer’s love of jazz music and his admiration of jazz performers, but also his own experience as an improviser. Todd makes use of his extensive choral skills which he demonstratee so effectively in compositions such as his oratorios The Burning Road (Op 10) and Saint Cuthbert (Op 7) or the chorus writing of his opera The Blackened Man. Mass in Blue is a confident work by a composer who understands and responds to the jazz idiom, making free use of the 12 bar blues sequence (which has been fundamental in the development of jazz music) as well as more complex harmonic processes.
The full programme was:
- Choral Warm-up Canon – Bernstein
- Seal Lullaby – Whitacre
- 5 English Folk Songs – Vaughan Williams
- Dark Eyed Sailor
- The Lover’s Ghost
- Autumn – Gjeilo
- Only in Sleep – Esenvalds
- Shenandoah – arr. James Erb
- The Rose – Todd
- Fascinating Rhythm – Gershwin arr. Saunders
- Mass in Blue – Todd