The Varasi Singers

Over the last two decades, the Vasari Singers has built up a reputation for excellence, versatility and sensitivity in both live performances and recordings. The choir gives annual concerts at St John’s, Smith Square and St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, ranging from an all-Bach programme to David Fanshawe’s African Sanctus. They have performed in most of the London concert venues, including the South Bank, the Wigmore Hall, the Barbican Centre and the Royal Albert Hall. Vasari has sung in many commercial concerts and festivals, including the BBC Proms. The choir sings regularly in Canterbury Cathedral, and has also deputised for the choirs at York, Ely, Winchester, Chester, Sheffield and Westminster Abbey. Vasari also takes on commercial work, having most recently appeared on BBC TV’s Songs of Praise, and performed the soundtrack for the Bafta-nominated Discovery Channel documentary.

The choir’s singers are highly experienced, many having joined from the LSO Chorus, the Kent Youth Choir, from university/college choirs and several of London’s leading chamber choirs. The choir has a programme to develop new voices and encourage younger singers to join — at least one new member gets performance experience with every concert. In 2005, Vasari celebrated its 25th anniversary, a major milestone for any organization. In this time, Vasari has been directed by just one conductor, Jeremy Backhouse. The choir is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies, the Society for Promotion of New Music, is a member of the Adopt a Composer Scheme, and the Arts and Business association. Vasari is supported by our Patron, Ward Swingle, by the Michael Marks Foundation, and through our Benefactors and Friends Schemes.

Discography

Vasari Singers: Mass in Blue

Mass In Blue Kyrie Gloria Credo Sanctus Benedictus Agnus Dei Christus Est Stella The Christ-Child Ave Verum Corpus None Other Lamb The Rose Lead Me Lord Lighting The Way Every Stone Shall Cry

Leading young composer Will Todd performs a unique fusion of sacred choral music and jazz in his Mass in Blue. This central work is complmented by beautiful musical setting of religious texts, infused with a highly individual and melodic style, bringing the composer's life-long love of traditional choral music into the 21st century with spiritual sensitivity and a contemporary edge.

Anthems for the 21st Century

Bless The Lord O My Soul - Dove Absolon My Son - Rathbone Angel Song II - Willl Todd Mysterium Christi - Filsell Hear My Crying, O God - Clucas When I See On Rood - Barlow Now I Have Known O Lord - Jackson Chosen - MacMillan I Saw Him Standing - Moore On Another's Sorrow - Blackford Peace - Bignold Give Us This Day - Ward Swingle

To celebrate its first twenty-five years of vibrant music making, the Vasari Singers commissioned ten composers each to write an anthem that might reflect the state of the world at the start of the new millennium. Their brief suggested that their work should be able to site comfortably within the context of a cathedral Evensong, but that it could also look beyond any constraints of Liturgy or formal religious doctrine to embrace a wider, more ecumenical audience; something more humanistic perhaps, that might connect more relevantly with multi-cultural, multi-faith societies of the world in the 21st century. This is an amazing variety of anthems concluding with Ward Swingle’s (of Swingle Singers fame) ode to the earth and the environment.

Pastorale - French Choral Music

Trois Chansons De Charles D'Orleans - Debussy Serenade D'hiver - Saint-Saens Les Norwegiennes - Delibes Deux Chansons - Saint-Saens Bailero (Chants D'Auvergne) - Canteloube L'Amour De Moi - Canteloube Madrigal op. 35 - Faure Pavane op. 50 - Faure Trois Chansons - Ravel Le Nymphs Des Bois - Delibes Hymne Au Printemps - Saint-Saens Chansons Des Bois D'Amaranthe - Massenet

This is distinguished singing from a superb choir. There is some astonishingly original choral writing here, particularly to be found in those pieces which are almost never heard, and the reasons for their neglect can have little to do with the quality of the music.. Delibe's Les Norwègienes, with a remarkable 'Slipping on the ice' onomatopoeia, is a case in point, and the first of Saint-Saëns's Deux Chansons , OP. 68 -'Calme des nuits' - is a wondrous piece. It is fascinating to hear Canteloube's a cappella settings of two of the more famous of his 'Bailèro' alongside the equally well-known Fauré Madrigal and Pavane, with piano accompaniment, the choral writing in the latter work coming across with exemplary clarity. The Ravel chansons, to his own texts, are brilliantly done here; Masonet's Amaranthe songs are a real treasure, and Jeremy Filsell's piano accompaniments are excellent.

Deep Purple

Birthday Madrigals Lullaby Of Birdland A Nightengale Sang In Berkeley Square Dances In The Street Moon River Autumn Leaves Deep Purple Calico Pie Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat Summertime Love Is Here To Stay Long Ago And Far Away All The Things You Are It was A Lover And His Lass Weeping Willow In A Mist L'Amour De Moi Country Dances

This selection of close harmony arrangements offers several well-known items by composers as diverse as Kern, Gershwin and Mancini, but also includes some newer works, including a Vasari commission from Bob Chilcott called "Dances in the Streets" and "Birthday Madrigals" by John Rutter. This fine recording includes many arrangements by Ward Swingle with whom the ensemble has often worked with.

Requiem Aeternam

Requiem Salvastor Mundi Psalm 23 Requiem Aeternam I Psalm 121 Requiem Aertnam II I Heard A Voice From Heaven Motet Take Earth For Cherishing Mass Kyrie Elesion Gloria Credo Sanctus Agnus Dei

Signum UK presents a deeply intimate disc, of personal and moving works by Herbert Howells and Frank Martin. In 1935 Herbert Howells’ son died at the age of nine. Howells sought release and consolation in his writing, and composed the a capella, six-movement Requiem as a private document to his son. Indeed, Howells considered his Requiem so personal an outpouring that he felt the need to withhold it from publication. It was not released until 1980, only three years before the composer’s own death. Frank Martin was a deeply religious man. He composed the Mass for Double Choir, early in his career. The work embodies the profound nature of his beliefs, and was the only work that Martin wrote purely for liturgical purposes. Such was the intensely intimate nature of the work, that, like Howells, the composer withheld it, and kept the manuscript safely in a drawer for over forty years. As Martin himself wrote, “This was something between God and me, that concerned nobody else”. The Vasari Singers perform these pieces with passion and devotion, and capture the very private and deep-rooted feelings contained within each work.

Kodaly Choral Works

Laudes Organi Esti Dal Panga Lingua Este Missa Brevis Introitus Kyrie Eleison Gloria Credo Sanctus Benedictus Agnus Dei Ite Missa Est

"Laudes Organi" was the last large scale work (1966) Kodály completed. A secular rather than a religious work, it is based on an eloquent Latin text and is "a fantasy on a twelfth century sequence". The work is a summing up of the composer’s many interests; the spirit of Gregorian chant, the parlando of Hungarian folk song, the almost visual effects he paints with the divided voices and the magnificent organ interludes, reminiscent of the polyphonic writing of Bach. The whole is nevertheless unmistakably Kodály and is a wonderful affirmation of his faith in the life-giving power of music. The much-loved " Esti Dal" is based on a folksong collected in Northern Hungary by Kodály in 1922. "Este", a youthful work - Kodály was barely 20 when he set the poem by his university teacher Pál Gyulai. The work attained its final form in 1904 and shows remarkable maturity and control. The six-part mixed choir is used to paint a wonderfully evocative pastel of the poem’s subject, the peaceful drifting into sleep.

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