David Terry

David Terry is currently director of music at The London Oratory School, and Director of Music at St Columba’s, Knightsbridge. David was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford and has previously worked at Downside School and Wells Cathedral, where he was sub organist.

The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble

The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble was created in 1967 to perform the larger chamber works— from quintets to octets—with players who customarily work together, instead of the usual string quartet with additional guests. Drawn from the principal players of the orchestra, the Chamber Ensemble tours as a string octet, string sextet, and in other configurations including winds. Its annual touring commitments are extensive, throughout Europe with frequent tours to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Their programme for the Abbey Festival includes one of Rossini’s sparkling string sonatas which reveals the composer as a born melodist. Mozart’s rarely performed Quintet for horn and strings which like all his chamber music is utterley charming, engaging and perfectly constructed. Plus surely one of Schubert’s finest masterpieces, the great Octet for woodwind and strings, a piece whose instrumentation, vivacious character and format of six movements evokes the tradition of the Classical Period serenade.

Red Priest

Following the success of their programmes of Bach, Johann I’m Only Dancing and Vivaldi, Carnival of the Seasons, Red Priest will take you on a whirlwind tour through the music of that other titan of the baroque, Georg Frederick Handel. Their all-new programme includes trio sonatas, chaconnes and virtuoso variations, transcriptions both sublime and tempestuous from operatic works including Rinaldo, Zadok the Priest and Solomon, and an audacious suite drawn from his most celebrated work, The Messiah. Handel’s music will be interspersed by works by other 18th century masters including Vivaldi and Forqueray.

Sherborne Festival Chorus

Conductor Paul Ellis

This year’s concert by the Sherborne Festival Chorus marks the bi-centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi, the grand master of Italian opera. This is surely the most dramatic of Requiem settings, full of word painting, huge contrasts and passion. Thundering drums, blasting trumpets and dramatic choruses contrast with lyricism and poignancy and Verdi’s operatic skills are never far from the surface in this vision of judgement and paradise. The Requiem was first performed in Milan in 1874, conducted by the composer. In fact Verdi was in ‘semi-retirement’ from opera writing at the time, though his two final great operas, Otello and Falstaff, were still to come. On first hearing the work, Brahms said ‘Only a genius could write something like this.’Top soloists, a large orchestra, and the Festival’s own highly acclaimed chorus, all in the inspired hands of the Abbey’s Director of Music, make this an unmissable evening of musical drama and blazing passion.

Snake Davis with Snake Strings

Workshop: Spend Saturday morning working with saxophonist Snake Davis and then join him for a couple of the numbers in the afternoon’s concert in the Abbey! Workshop numbers are limited and are aimed primarily at those aged 8 – 18 who have reached the equivalent of Grade 4 or above. Adults are welcome on a space- available basis. The workshop fee includes participation in the concert. A ticket for the concert includes one adult and up to 2 children. For more information please see the Festival website.
Concert: Described as a “virtuoso” by the Daily Telegraph, renowned saxophonist Snake Davis regularly plays sell-out shows with his jazz and soul tinged compositions. Now he places his saxophone within a classical context by the addition of Snakestrings, a wonderful string quartet. Together they add their own unique sense of musicality to classical, musical theatre, film, pop and soul classics, bringing the Festival a performance which is powerful, moving, and a delight to the senses.

The Sixteen

Members of The Sixteen return to Sherborne Abbey to perform an exquisite programme of music by Monteverdi. He was the greatest of the Italian Renaissance composers – every composition in this collection is beautifully constructed and full of luscious harmonies. These virtuosic works include some of Monteverdi’s most significant sacred polyphonic writing and will be performed by eight singers and six instrumentalist

Zum

It seems as if everyone has heard of gypsy tango these days,so it is easy to forget that this extremely popular genre did not exist until it was created by Zum: the first – and best – gypsy tango band. A gypsy tango heartbeat runs through everything Zum does, as you would expect from the musicians who stole the music from the bordellos of Buenos Aires and the backstreets of Eastern Europe to fashion gypsy tango itself. In The World Reforged, Zum celebrate their favourite music. Blues, jazz, celtic, bluegrass, klezmer and folk from around the world are melted down and reforged into ingots of pure Zum. This is an irresistible alchemy with a gypsy tango core.

Yeovilton Military Wives Choir

Ladies of the Yeovilton branch, Military Wives Choir are looking forward to their first visit to Sherborne. Come and hear them performing some light, popular music in Castleton Church. Pieces will include the beautiful Diamond Jubilee single Sing and of course, their first number one hit single, Wherever You Are.

Photograph by Danielle Bonnie Robbins

Sherborne School Swing and Jazz Bands

Sherborne School Swing Band, whose All Stars jazz evenings sell out within days of the tickets becoming available, perform a set of fast bebop and popular Fitzgerald/Nat King Cole/Sinatra vocal numbers in the Tindall Recital Hall at the Music School. In the last three years the band has recorded four CDs and since 2008 has established a pattern of biennial Caribbean tours. Come to hear the band play music which will be taken to the Salcombe Jazz Festival at the end of the month, but arrive early as seating is limited to 120 and the venue filled rapidly in 2012.

Sherborne Close Harmony Group

Sherborne School Chamber Choir, a twenty strong male voice choir comprising of cathedral choristers who are now Music Scholars at the school, performs an eclectic programme of sacred music, arranged for tenors and basses, interspersed with close harmony favourites and some popular barbershop numbers.

Dawn to Dusk: Schola Cantorum, Leweston School

This year Schola will be singing a programme of sacred and secular music which describes a full day from sunrise to sunset through praising God for the beauty of the day, folk songs celebrating life and lullabies to close our eyes to.