“Bugles Calling”, the Sackville Singers’ summer concert is to take place at St Peter’s Church, Ightham, on Sunday 29th June 2014. The money raised through tickets sale will go to Veterans Aid.
The Church has been supporting Veterans Aid since 2010 when Colonel the Reverend Richard Whittington, former Rector at St Peter’s and now a Chaplain of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, suggested Veterans Aid as a worthy cause for the sponsorship.
Picture: Matilda Lloyd
The concert, organised by the Sackville Singers’ choir, will feature a special performance of Matilda Lloyd, a trumpeter who won the BBC Young Musician Award in 2014. Matilda has just returned from playing Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto with the Cory Band at the European Brass Band Championship Gala Concert in Perth. Her trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn have graced many concerts in the past few years.
Douglas Fisher, a member of the choir, said “We are truly delighted to have Matilda as a guest performer for this exciting Veterans Aid charity presentation. Moreover, three pieces were written especially for this concert by one of our singers Elizabeth Dwinell, and the whole event is directed by Jozik Kotz*, an international opera singer and choir director.”
The Sackville Singers began as a group of friends who gathered in 1979 to sing madrigals for fun and to raise money for charities. In the years since, the choir has doubled in size.
Elizabeth Dwinell is a member of the choir and a violin teacher in the Sevenoaks Area. She studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music. She said, “As a Quaker, I am committed to striving for peace, and felt that these poems by Sassoon spoke clearly of the anguish and confusion experienced by many of those in active service at the time, and probably now. Sassoon was, of course, in active service during the Great War, and suffered both mental and physical injury. The three poems are, Suicide in the Trenches, Everyone Sang, and the One-legged Man.”
The programme will feature sacred and secular works composed during 1914 – 1918. The “Bugles Calling” concert is in honour and memory of men and women who followed the call, whether through duty, patriotism, idealism, or shame, to the front lines of France and Belgium. It is easy to focus on the horror, disillusionment and futility experienced in the trenches, but the Choir wants to remember the cheerful optimism, the faith and purpose of those very ordinary soldiers and the families left behind.
*Jozik Kotz, in addition to his work leading the Sackville Singers, has performed with English National Opera, The Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, BBC Proms and other companies across Europe. Kotz is a musical director of Hailsham Choral Society and Glyndebourne Youth Opera. He is also a director of music at Sevenoaks Preparatory School.
For more information about the concert please call 01892 616 024 or email philipgl@talktalk.net
Tickets £10 | Family £25 |
