All Saints Singers and Musicians
Since Easter 2021, All Saints has been developing a voluntary choir to lead congregational singing and offer music as part of our worship. We are fortunate to have both an excellent pipe organ and a grand piano; occasionally we have been joined by instrumentalists. Since September 2021, we have been led by our music director and organist, Stuart Donaldson.
Our core activity is singing at the weekly Eucharist on
Sundays at 10.00am, but beyond that we are involved in music-making at other times, when we often welcome additional singers who cannot be with us in the morning. We have offered
occasional choral Evensong at St Luke’s Nursing Home, which is in our parish; there were carol services for Advent and Christmas; and in December we also sang for the Oxford Brookes University carol services at Christ Church Cathedral. In the future we will be participating in various extra services (e.g. for Lent and Easter) and we anticipate launching an occasional
choral Evensong in the church. These will be announced on the website.
Already, our repertoire has been wide. Hymns are mainly drawn from
Common Praise, supplemented by
Hymns Ancient and Modern (2013) and periodically other sources. Anthems have taken in styles and traditions from medieval plain chant, Tudor anthems and Henry Purcell, via the major classical composers and standard Anglican church music, to Taizé, Iona and other recent writing. We aim to match closely the themes of the service in question, so as to focus and develop our thoughts, and make them memorable.
Choir practices take place weekly on
Friday evenings from 8.00pm to 9.15pm; we also convene at
9.30am for a warm-up before Sunday services. None of our members is a professional singer. Rather, we aim to make our contribution to church life and worship, to improve our skills and to enjoy music together.
You are very welcome to join us – regularly or occasionally. It helps if you have some experience of learning and holding a part, but we regard a commitment to practising together and at home as even more important.
Below is a list of anthems we have sung recently. Please do take a look!
Choir anthems
If you would like to learn more about the choir, or about playing an instrument in our services, then please contact our organist,
Stuart Donaldson, via
organist@allsaintsheadington.org.uk , or our choir secretary,
Vivienne Larminie, via
music-organiser@allsaintsheadington.org.uk .
We look forward to hearing from/meeting you!