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Summer Singing Here We Come!

Well, it’s been quite a year! With the promising news on vaccine rollout, and the end of lockdown timetable apparently progressing as planned (fingers crossed), it looks like Summer 2021 should be the last term on Zoom for Cambridge and Leith Hill Timeline Choirs. We’ll be kicking off with two open sessions, which anybody can attend, on Tuesday 27th and Thursday 29th April (sign up here).

It’s been a tough year, but we think we’ve made the best of it. Of course we’ve missed singing together in the same room (terribly!)… and it’s fair to say that we (Stef and Claire) will breathe a massive sigh of relief when the time comes to put technology to one side… But there have been huge silver linings in all of this upheaval too! Welcoming new temporary members from outside Cambridge/Surrey has been an absolute delight, and we’ve been so privileged to welcome our new Dutch members, as well as friends from around the UK. We’ll be thinking hard about how to keep these precious connections in future, when things move back to their usual locations. For now, it’s full steam ahead with preparations for what we hope will be our last ever Timeline Together Term, with a plan to move back to in-person singing in the autumn. Getting together to sing later in the summer may well become possible, but we’ll provide a full term of Zoom choir and aim to schedule any in-person singing as an additional activity, outside of those rehearsals, as and when it becomes possible.

As always, the goal this term will be to recreate the togetherness of choral singing in spite of us being physically apart. The theme is music for the summer season (including summery shape-note songs, rounds, folksongs, and even a summer hymn), and ‘songs of home’ – music with words and melodies from our local areas. In the latter category we have a brand new commission by Chris Leadham (a song set in Cambridge Town), brand new arrangements by Stef and Claire, and music to celebrate local saints, who have their festivals in May and June, including a hymn about Æthelryth, the 7th-century Abbess of Ely! We’ll also be inviting members to share songs from where they grew up. Like last term, Claire and Stef will continue to work together and Leith Hill and Cambridge members are welcome to attend rehearsals on Tuesdays with Claire and/or Thursdays with Stef. We’re also continuing to welcome new members, taking advantage of the opportunity to sing with friends from around the world… So tell your friends! 🙂

We will keep you well-stocked with heart-warming harmony during these troubling times!

Each choir will run a weekly online rehearsal for an hour:
  • Leith Hill Timeline Choir (Claire): 7:30-8:30pm – Tuesday evenings (from Surrey)
  • Cambridge Timeline Choir (Stef): 7:00-8:00pm – Thursday evenings (from Cambridge)
Our term will run for 10 weeks:
From Tuesday 27th  and Thursday 29th April
to Tues 6th and Thursday 8th July
(With a HALF TERM break in the week commencing Monday 31st May.)

Leith Hill Timeline Choir Begins the Spring Term with a Zoom session on Tuesday 27th April, 7:30–8:30pm, live from Claire’s living room. Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. If you’d like to sing with us, you can either: sign up for the open session on 27th April, email Claire to join or read more here.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with a Zoom session on Thursday 29th April, 7:00–8:00pm, live from Stef’s living room (now featuring special guest performers, Maxi and Maia, the Bengal Terrors of Madras Road). Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. If you’d like to sing with us, you can either: sign up for the open session on 29th April, email Stef to join or read more here. N.B., the different timings for Cambridge and Leith Hill.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

JOIN US!

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Although the Coronavirus crisis lockdown has made it impossible for Leith Hill and Cambridge Timeline Choirs to meet in person during the Summer Term, we have decided the show must go own! Timeline Choir is going virtual, and you are invited to sing with us from the comfort of your own homes!

What’s more, we decided to try to turn these restrictions on our activities (can’t meet in person, can’t hear each other singing in real time) into an opportunity, by embracing things we can’t do in the real world, but can do in the virtual one. First of all, we’re giving Leith Hill and Cambridge members the chance to join in with each other’s choirs this term (well, why not?!). We’ve also joined forces Jon Hughes (website here), known to TLC members as the composer of Through the Gate, one of our favourite pieces to sing. By collaborating with each other, we can combine our skill-sets to make available a far greater range of online resources over the coming term, as well as new music, fresh ideas, and the chance to connect with like-minded singers from other parts of the UK. It’s a way of turning this separation into a coming together. 🙂

We have four choirs working together for this online project.
Each choir will run a weekly online rehearsal for an hour:
  • Leith Hill Timeline Choir (Claire): 7:30-8:30pm – Tuesday evenings (Surrey)
  • The Stonegate Singers (Jon): 7:30-8:30pm – Wednesday evenings (York)
  • Cambridge Timeline Choir (Stef): 7:00-8:00pm – Thursday evenings (ends as the NHS clap begins)
  • The Roundhay Singers (Jon): 8:05-9:05pm – Thursday evenings (starts just after the NHS clap) (Leeds)
Our term will run for 11 weeks:
From w/c Monday 20th April to w/c Monday 6th July
With HALF TERM in w/c Monday 25th May.

As well as these weekly sessions, Claire, Stef, and Jon will be sharing warmup videos, rounds, technical tips, fun songs, tutorials for harmony parts, and much more as the term progresses. We will keep you well-stocked with heart-warming harmony during these troubling times!

Leith Hill Timeline Choir Begins the Summer Term with a Zoom session on Tuesday 21st April, 7:30–8:30pm, live from Claire’s living room. Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins the Summer Term with a Zoom session on Thursday 23rd April, 7:00–8:00pm, live from Stef’s living room (usually featuring special guest performer, Magnus the piano-playing cat). Invitations to the Zoom rehearsals arrive by email at the beginning of every week. You can email Stef to sign up or read more here.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

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Autumn Timeline Choir rehearsals kick off on Tuesday 14th January (Surrey) and Thursday 16th Jan (Cambridge). As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season, Leith Hill Timeline Choir take the plunge into a wonderful watery programme of sea shanties, sailor songs, and splashing sonic surprises on an aquatic theme, while Cambridge Timeline Choir also dip their toes into the waters of the fens for an East of England summer folk jolly, followed by an autumn concert celebrating the hedonistic joys of wine and romance! Expect bawdy humour from bygone eras, raucous drinking songs, ecstatic musical pageantry, and a few cheeky innuendoes.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 16th January, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only)  or read more here.

Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 14th January, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.

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Autumn Timeline Choir rehearsals resume on Tuesday 17th September (Surrey) and Thursday 26th September (Cambridge) with a pre-term sing and meet on Saturday 21st September, 3:00-6pm. As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season sees Leith Hill Timeline Choir continue our righteously harmonious programme ‘Melodic Dissent II’, celebrating music as a powerful weapon in the perennial fight against cruelty and injustice, from as early as the Middle Ages and including folk songs from the North, love songs to trees from Sussex and songs of protest against land enclosure by the poet John Clare.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 26th September, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only)  or read more here.

Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 17th September, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.

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Join Cambridge Timeline Choir and Leith Hill Timeline Choir on Saturday 20th July, at St Paul’s Church, Cambridge, for a gutsy parade of beautiful but angry music, medieval to modern, which was written to right the wrong of the world in song!

From Richard the Lionheart’s musical complaint against imprisonment, to renaissance polyphony protesting the execution of martyrs during the wars of religion, to folk songs uncovering the harsh conditions faced by factory workers in the 19th century, Timeline Choir takes on the challenge of summoning up the righteous anger of past songsters, to deliver an emotionally charged as well as beautiful choral programme.

In a mixture of choral performances, solos, small ensembles, and even poetry readings, the Timeline Choir performers musically fight the good fight in an eclectic array of musical styles. You will be both challenged and uplifted by fierce and defiant psalms, abolitionist hymns, troubadour song, heartbreaking folk songs about poverty and exploitation, press gangs, war, and injustice, black humour from the first world war, anthems for universal suffrage, recusant catholic polyphony, environmental protest songs, and music of dissent from the fens.

The performance takes place at 7:30pm, at St Paul’s Church, Hill Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP. There will be short interval in which refreshments are served. All are welcome!

Tickets will be available from Cambridge Live, from July 5th:

EMAIL: Tickets@cambridgelive.org.uk
BOOKING LINE: 01223 357851
ADDRESS: Cambridge Live Tickets, Wheeler St, Cambridge, CB2 3QB
WEBSITE: www.cambridgelivetickets.co.uk

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Spring Timeline Choir rehearsals resume on Tuesday 15th (Surrey) and Thursday 17th (Cambridge) January. As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This season sees kicks off our righteously harmonious programme ‘Melodic Dissent’, celebrating music as a powerful weapon in the perennial fight against cruelty and injustice, from as early as the Middle Ages and including folk songs from the fens, love songs to trees from Sussex and songs of protest against land enclosure by the poet John Clare.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 17th January, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only)  or read more here.

Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 15th January, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Claire to sign up or read more here.

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Cambridge Timeline Choir will sing carols in the courtyard at Wimpole Estate as part of their Christmas celebrations on Sunday 2nd December. The singing runs from 2pm ’til 2:30pm and features light-hearted English carols and folksongs with a sprinkling of Christmas cheer! The event is free to attend and open to all.

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All are welcome to an evening of traditional songs and festive carols from the southern counties, with Leith Hill Timeline Choir, on Saturday 24th November, 7:30pm, in Rusper Church. Sussex was at the forefront of the English Folk revival of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Alongside their more famous peers Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, the choir celebrate the names Burstow, Belloc and Broadwood: a shoemaker and bell ringer, an Anglo-French writer, historian and enthusiastic drinker of Sussex beer, and the daughter of a famous family of piano manufacturers, who was, more importantly, one of history’s greatest champions of English traditional music.

Henry Burstow boasted a vast repertoire of 420 songs, some of which he passed onto Broadwood for her first volume English Country Songs, published in 1893, as well as contributing to the folk-song collections of Vaughan Williams. Hilaire Belloc was one of the most prolific writers of early 20th century England. He spent most of his life in West Sussex, loving the county to the point of idolatry, and writing several works about the area. He loved Sussex songs (particularly the ones about drinking) and wrote about singing as if it were the soul of Sussex. Lucy Broadwood, the unsung heroine of the English folksong, bridged the divide between traditional and art music. Eschewing the conventional harmonies of the Victorian drawing-room ballad, she was instead drawn to the stunning simplicity of the folk song, believing them to possess “perhaps the most beautiful, original and varied cadences to be found in music”. She is buried here in Rusper Church. Interwoven with songs collected, written and sung by these three Sussex greats will be some favourite Christmas carols, lending a seasonal slant to the timeless themes of love, loss and compassion, which have been at the heart of the English folksong since time immemorial. There will be one or two opportunities to sing along!

Tickets cost £12, including a glass of wine, and are available to reserve by calling either Maggie (01293 851906) or Louise (01293 871600)

Leith Hill Timeline Choir is proud to present Southern County Songs in association with Rusper Church’s Belloc, Broadway and Beyond project: www.rusperchurch.org.uk/belloc-broadwood-and-beyond

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Autumn Timeline Choir rehearsals resume on Tuesday 18th (Surrey) and Thursday 27th (Cambridge) September. As always, new members are most welcome to come and join us for the new term. This autumn and winter season sees a focus on medieval and renaissance Christmas songs in Cambridge, festive folk songs collected by Lucy Broadwood in Surrey and a look into our 2019 programme ‘Melodic Dissent’, celebrating music as a powerful weapon in the perennial fight against cruelty and injustice, from as early as the Middle Ages and including folk songs from the fens, love songs to trees from Sussex and songs of protest against land enclosure by the poet John Clare.

Timeline Choir is a community singing group with a difference: although it is open to all, with no auditions and no requirement for members to be able to read music, the choir is set apart by its specially-arranged and artistically ambitious repertoire, which celebrates the heritage of the local area, from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day.

Cambridge Timeline Choir begins with an open session on Thursday 27th September, 7:30pm, at the St. Barnabas Centre on Mill Road. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up (Cambridge only)  or read more here.

Leith Hill Timeline Choir resumes with an open session on Tuesday 18th September, 7:30pm, at Forest Green Village Hall, Forest Green, Surrey. If you love to sing then come along and try out some beautiful old music… arranged in new ways! You can email Stef to sign up or read more here.