Concert archive
Here's something about the concerts we've given in recent years. We take you back as far as 2019, but there's a gap because of the Covid lockdown when choir's were not allowed to meet or perform.
Next up....
Rivers & Roads
Sunday, 4 February 2024
2:00pm 'til 5:00pm
at The Theatre Royal, Winchester
The Sarah Morgan Foundation is presenting a concert at the Theatre Royal in Winchester on Sunday 4 February 2024, 2pm ‘til 5pm. The concert celebrates the lives and work of Sarah Morgan and Paul Sartin and it features Winchester Community Choir and five other choirs from Hampshire.
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If you're a choir member and perform on the day, admission is free.
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If you're not performing and would like to be in the audience for this upbeat celebration, click the button below to go to the Box Office
Christmas Carols and Owls by Moonlight
The Hawk Conservancy Trust is a charity with a mission to conserve birds of prey and their habitats. The Trust's annual Christmas Carols and Owls by Moonlight is one of the Trust's most popular and important fundraising events of the year. Winchester Community Choir will be singing carols in the open air alongside the Trust's free-flying owls in the moonlight. Tom Morath from the Trust says, 'We have the most beautiful backdrop to this show in one of our three flying arenas at the Trust. It really is magical.'
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Tuesday, 19 December 2023 from 7:00pm
at the Hawk Conservancy's Bird of Prey Centre, Sarson Lane, Andover, SP11 8DY
This is a two-day event. Winchester Community Choir performs on the Tuesday. Our friends from Salisbury Community Choir are there on Monday.
Tickets sold out
for this event
Christmas concert 2023
Tuesday 5 December 2023 at 7:30pm.
at The United Church, Winchester
We kick off with an old favourite from Hampshire - the rousing Rejoice Mankind and Sing. Then a couple of bluesy numbers before a carol written by a man more famous now for his wallpaper than his poetry.
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After some interval refreshments we're back for a song of lies and marvels, Christina Rossetti meets Gustav Holst In the bleak midwinter, and a farmer with 11 children finds peace and quiet on his milking stool to write about the Beautiful star of Bethlehem.
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This concert raises fund for The Winchester Beacon - the new working name of the long-established charity, Winchester Churches Nightshelter founded in 1988. The Winchester Beacon’s premises in Jewry Street is open all day and all night, 365 days of the year. It accommodates between 60 and 80 people annually and provides ongoing support to many more.
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Our summer concert 2023
Tuesday 4 July 2023 at 7:30pm.
at The United Church, Winchester​
This is Winchester Community Choir’s summer concert - Hampshire and Beyond. The programme includes a set of songs with a strong connection to our own county. Then we’ll visit our neighbours: Fields of Gold by Sting, written in Wiltshire, a tune from the Copper family in Sussex, and Dorset words set to music by Vaughan Williams. Beyond takes us to Somerset and Cambridgeshire and eventually to North America for some blues, hymnody and shanties from Missouri and the Mississippi.
As usual the concert is a fundraiser, this time for the Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group - volunteers who befriend and support asylum seekers and refugees. There’ll be a retiring collection and a share of the ticket sales for this local charity.
Summer 2022
WCC’s Summer concert on 12 July 2022 was called Bushes and Briars.
Our summer concert on 12 July, Bushes and Briars, was a great success. Audience feedback was really positive:
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‘a lovely, varied programme’
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‘loved the readings, could hear every word, lovely expression’
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‘looked as though choir really enjoyed the experience’
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‘superb BRAVE soloists, marvellous precision and all looking at the conductor’
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‘your enjoyment was infectious!’
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Our audience gave generously to the retiring collection, which goes this year to the Mayor of Winchester’s charities. The collection, plus a share of ticket sales, meant we could give £400 to benefit Trinity Winchester, British Heart Foundation and Winchester Hospice. Thank you to all our generous supporters and choir members for such a brilliant outcome.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). It’s being commemorated in concerts all over the world, including at the Proms in London. We like to think we contributed to the birthday celebrations. Bushes and Briars, the title of the concert, was the first folk song that Ralph Vaughan Williams noted down. When RVW heard Bushes and Briars sung by a seventy-year-old labourer, Charles Pottipher, he ‘felt it was something I had known all my life’. So began a passion for preserving a disappearing heritage that took RVW far and wide over the country into travellers’ camps, pubs and workhouses. RVW set the song for four male voices, but we sang Bushes and Briars in a lovely arrangement for mixed choir by Sally Davies.
Christmas 2021
WCC’s Summer concert on 7 December 2021 as called Brand New Day
Winchester Community Choir held its first Christmas Concert in two years on Tuesday 7th December at the United Church in Jewry Street. The event was a sell-out and raised £800 for The Boaz Project, an organisation which helps people with learning difficulties.
Covid stops play
National restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid meant that we were not able to rehearse in person during lockdown and for some time afterwards. Instead we had fortnightly rehearsals by Zoom, led by our Music Director, Carolyn Robson.
Like many choirs across the country we expected that prohibition on rehearsals would be lifted when the government announced the move to Step 3 of its route map out of lockdown, which began on 17 May 2021. Unfortunately amateur choirs were limited to rehearsal out-of-doors. Several members joined the campaign to try and reverse this policy, writing letters to MPs and signing a national petition which raised 59,000 signatures but the campaign failed to shift the government’s prohibition on indoor singing.
We complied with the restrictions during the summer term 2021, alternating weekly between rehearsals outdoors, weather permitting, and on-line sessions. River Park was our out-door venue. We ended the summer term with a picnic in the wonderful garden of Itchen Abbas Manor, courtesy of Joan and Rodey Dartnell. Paul Tabbush played Northumbrian smallpipes and the choir performed to itself as the sun set over the Itchen.
Step 4 of the routemap allowed us to resume weekly rehearsals indoors at The United Church in Jewry Street in September 2021. The Sanctuary became our rehearsal room after more than a year’s break.
Christmas 2019
WCC’s Christmas concert on
10 December 2019 as called Christmas in Winchester
Summer 2019
We joined five other choirs for this concert in Winchester's Guildhall. The event raised funds for the Sarah Morgan Foundation - a charity that supports the community choir movement in England. The charity was set up in memory of Sarah Morgan the founding Music Director of Winchester Community Choir.
Summer 2019
Winchester Community Choir hosted a visit by a German choir, Avanti Dilettanti, on a long weekend 30 May to 3 June 2019.
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Both choirs joined in an afternoon workshop on the Saturday, followed by a concert performance from the two choirs in the evening.