Members’ Page – Malvernfestivalchorus

News

This section is specifically for choir members and is where you will find all the announcements previously made at rehearsals plus a range of useful resources to help you familiarise yourself with the works we are performing and so get the most out of rehearsals.
Click on the buttons below to access rehearsal dates for the current season, practice files to help with “note-bashing”, recordings of the works we are performing to hear what they should sound like, and details of what has been rehearsed at each rehearsal.

Carols for All 2023

The Carols for All concert will be on Thursday 28 December at 3.00 pm in Great Malvern Priory. There will be a rehearsal on the day in the Priory from 12.00 – 1.30 pm. Dress for the concert will be festive, ideally red, gold or green.

Details of the running order for the concert can be found here.

Notices 03 October 2023

Quiz Night – Thursday 16 November 2023, The Swan Inn, Newland, WR13 5AY
Following the success of our last Quiz Night, it has been decided to hold another one at the same venue, The Swan Inn, Newland. It will take place on Thursday 16 November. Further details will be issued shortly.

Bring and Buy – Tuesday 5 December 2023, Lansdowne Methodist Church, Lansdowne Crescent, Malvern
There will be a seasonal Bring and Buy at our Carols for All rehearsal in Lansdowne Methodist Church on Tuesday 5 December. Please bring items to sell as well as money to buy.

Please note that rehearsals for Carols for All will all be held in Lansdowne Methodist Church.

Subscriptions for 2023-24 season

Subscriptions for the 2023-24 season are now due. Payment can be made direct to the Malvern Festival Chorus account no. 00347783 sort code 30-95-41. Alternatively our Treasurer, Ian Thomas, is happy to receive payment by cheque or cash.

AGM Tuesday 12 September 2023 8.45pm, St Edmunds Hall, College Road

This year’s AGM was held after rehearsal on 12 September 2023.

Click on the links below to access AGM documents.

Notices 14 March 2023

MFC Rules
The choir rules have been amended to reflect changes following the pandemic. A copy has been emailed to all members who are urged to familiarise themselves with them. The rules can also be found here.

Rehearsal register
Please remember to sign in at each rehearsal. If you are attending on Zoom, please let Joy know or put a Z against the relevant rehearsal date the next time you attend rehearsal in person. Please also ensure you have indicated whether or not you will be singing in the concert on 20 May.

Elgar Festival Chorus
As members of MFC you are invited to take part in Elgar Festival Chorus’ concert as part of the annual Elgar Festival on Saturday 3 June in Worcester Cathedral. This year the concert will be Elgar’s The Music Makers with the English Symphony Orchestra under their conductor Kenneth Woods.

A number of MFC members took part in the Festival concert last year. We found it to be a rewarding experience for which we had to put in a lot of personal practice to be fully prepared! We have received the following information from the Elgar Festival Chorus:

Rehearsals will be taken by Stephen Shellard at St Andrew’s Methodist Church, Pump Street, Worcester WR1 2QT.
Saturday, 1 April 10 – 1pm
Saturday, 15 April 10 – 1pm
Saturday, 13 May 10 – 1pm
Saturday, 20 May 1 – 4pm
plus, conductor’s rehearsal on Monday 29 May, 19.30 – 21.30pm (this is a Bank Holiday) and on-the-day afternoon rehearsals with full orchestra in Worcester Cathedral, Saturday 3 June (from 1.30pm.)

Singers are required to attend at least 3 of the Saturday sessions with Stephen Shellard, plus the Conductor’s rehearsal on 29 May, and afternoon rehearsals on concert day, 3 June with Kenneth Woods.

There is no charge to take part. Music will be available at the first rehearsal if required.

You will note that one of the Saturday rehearsals is on 20 May, which is the date of MFC’s next concert when we’ll be performing the Stanford and Rutter pieces in Great Malvern Priory. This should obviously take precedence and shouldn’t present a problem as it is possible to miss one of the Saturday rehearsals with Stephen Shellard.

If you would like to participate, you can register to join the Elgar Festival Chorus here: Join the 2023 Elgar Festival Chorus! – The Elgar Festival

Please let Barbara Moss know that you have registered so that we have a record of MFC members who are representing us in the Elgar Festival Chorus.

Notices – 11 October 2022

Annual Brochures
Annual brochures are available at rehearsals for members to take and hand to friends, family, and businesses who display leaflets. Help us to get word around about concerts for the year and encourage people to join us to sing or in the audience.

Membership Forms
If you haven’t completed a membership form yet this season, please ask Joy Black, our Membership Secretary, for a form and return the completed form to her as soon as possible. It’s important we have your contact details and it will help ensure everyone gets information sent out by email. If you’re not sure whether you’ve completed a form this season, check the rehearsal signing-in register. A black dot beside your name indicates that you have.

Concert Programmes Advertising
To help cover the cost of printing concert programmes we need more advertisers. Please let Mary Whitehouse or Alice Osmond know if you know of any businesses who might like to support us in this way and get their business in front of our members and audience.

Making Music
Making Music are offering the opportunity to use their Platform, which is time-saving management software. It would provide everything we need to organise our group in one place. However they advise that to implement this we ideally need one person to project-manage the implementation. There is a lot of support available to do this but no one on the committee felt they have the skills to take on the implementation. We are appealing to members who may have this sort of skill to let us know if they can help – or perhaps you know someone who could?

AGM – Tuesday 13 September 2022

This year’s AGM took place in St Edmunds Hall on Tuesday 13 September. Click on the links below to see the AGM Notice, agenda and annual reports / accounts.

Virtual Rehearsals

Rehearsals Details
The rehearsal starts at 7.30 pm but the link will be open from 7.15 pm. You will be sent a link to join the rehearsal but you may find the following points useful:

For the best experience, use a laptop or pc which has a camera and a microphone. You can also use a tablet but the experience isn’t quite as good as it is with a laptop.
Locate yourself in a quiet part of the house where you are unlikely to be disturbed or distracted. If there is a strong light source it should be in front of you rather than behind you.
Use headphones/earphones if you have them. These enable you to hear instructions and music more clearly than if you rely on the computer’s inbuilt speakers.
It is possible to join the meeting via a telephone link. You will be able to hear everything but the experience will be poorer than on a computer.
You do not need to sign up to Zoom or create an account to join the rehearsal
You do not need to pay anything
You may be asked to download Zoom onto your computer after you click on the link. This is completely normal and will give you a better experience than using the browser version of Zoom.
If the download doesn’t work you can click on a link to open Zoom in your browser.
The rehearsal will be “muted “ automatically for everyone except Jonathan and Penny. No one will hear you sing other than yourself!
If you wish to communicate with anyone during the rehearsal you can use the CHAT function on the Zoom taskbar. You should use this to raise any queries about your part with Jonathan or Penny.

If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, you may wish to watch one of the many tutorials for beginners available on YouTube. You can access these by typing “Zoom for beginners” into your internet browser search box.

Notices 19 March 2019

Practice files and Useful Recordings
To help with “note-bashing” and general practice between rehearsals, you can find links to online practice files and recordings of the works we will be performing by clicking on the Practice Files and Useful Recordings buttons at the top of this webpage. You can also find details of the items practised at each rehearsal by clicking on the Rehearsal Schedule button at the top of this webpage.

Notices 13 November 2018

New MFC Twitter handle: @ChorusMalvern
Please follow us on this new handle and retweet our posts to spread the word about our concerts. Our Twitter feed can be accessed from the Twitter icon in the top right-hand corner of each page of the website.