Choir will be on song at St Paul’s Church

Biggleswade and District Choral Society will be performing ‘Divine Emblems’, a work written to celebrate the landmark, in a concert on Saturday, May 14.

The piece will be part of the society’s A Festival of English Choral Music at St Paul’s Church in Bedford.

Chairman Archie Russell said: “We wanted to mark this significant birthday with something different.

“When we arranged for composer John Chambers to set some verses by John Bunyan to music we knew we had something very special for Bedfordshire, linking old and modern.”

John Chambers grew up in Sandy and received his early musical training in the area before he went on to study composition at Trinity College of Music in London.

His work has received critical acclaim, including the fanfares he wrote for the re-opening of Greenwich Observatory by the Queen.

Karen Brown, musical director at the society, said: “Divine Emblems is a big adventure for the choir and will be for our audience too – it’s a wonderful connection of the old and the new.

“The concert will follow the development of English choral music since the late 1800s and includes work by Sullivan, Stanford and Elgar through to Vaughan Williams, Finzi and Rutter, as well as our 21st century piece.”

For the full story see the Biggleswade Chronicle of Friday, April 15.