Opera Gala Night 2024

Saturday 29th June at the Clarence Hall in Crickhowell

Hot on the heels of our May Music Festival, the choir’s summer concert celebrated the wonderful world of opera. It proved to be a night of splendid entertainment with a sequence of spectacular operatic hits highlighting the development of the form from Monteverdi to modern times. The programme held many special moments with well-known showstopping choruses from Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La Traviata, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, alongside earlier masterpieces by Handel, Gluck and Purcell. 

The concert also provided the opportunity to showcase the amazing talents of our choral scholars, both as solo singers and instrumentalists. They performed some well-known arias and works for strings and piano to complement the concert’s dramatic theme. All in all, the perfect accompaniment to a summer’s evening.

Crickhowell Music Festival, 2024

Heaven Calling! A musical banquet that’s heaven-sent!

Friday 3rd – Monday 6th May at Clarence Hall and St Edmund’s Church

2024 saw our 28th Festival and featured extraordinary pieces by leading C17^th and C18^th composers that explored the mysteries of the creator spirit and its life-affirming force.

Saturday’s programme saw us celebrating music’s muse and patron, St Cecilia, who through her art could commune with angels, as was made apparent during the performance of Purcell’s wonderful Ode for St Cecilia’s Day.

Complementing this came a first performance in England and Wales of an overlooked masterpiece by Antonio Lotti. His Mass for 3 Choirs provided us with more marvellous insights into a composer’s creative imagination.

In contrast, Sunday’s concert focused on two miraculous interventions in human history, with music for Pentecost and the Annunciation. Who better to capture the sudden outpouring of the spirit on the disciples than the great J.S. Bach in the joyous outbursts of his cantata O ewiges Feuer (O eternal fire). The surprising news  brought by Gabriel to Mary that she was ‘with child’ received an equally rapturous response in C.P.E. Bach’s setting of her song, the Magnificat. 

Equally inspiring was our star lineup of soloists, which this year included several of our former scholars who are now making a name for themselves on the professional circuit, as well as favourite voices that Festival fans will know from previous years, including Catherine King, Charles Daniels, Rory McLeery (who bravely stepped in at the last minute to replace James Hall who was ill) and Robert Davies.

Monday’s Bank Holiday event was another tribute to former choral scholars. Originally written for students at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama by prize-winning composer and former Choral Society scholar Tomos Owen Jones, this setting of The Egg is something out of the ordinary. A search for the meaning of life itself, it charts an individual’s conversation with the Almighty in music that proved both captivating and poignant. 

But Friday evening launched this year’s events literally on a high with ‘VRï’(translating as ‘up’), one of the Welsh folk scene’s most legendary bands. This amazing trio breathes new life into traditional songs with its unique mix of earthy dance tunes and classical poise. 

2023 – Music for MND

St Edmunds Church

Music For MND was a wonderfully successful fundraising event in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association. It was held in conjunction with local schools and musicians and £3000 was raised for the charity

If you couldn’t make it to the concert  but would like to support the charity, JustGiving is only a click away. Thank you!