We have now sorted out a weekend visit for the Cathedral Chamber Choir in 2010. Over the Low Sunday weekend we will be at Sherborne Abbey. Their bell-ringers seem to move in as soon as the Abbey choir takes a break, but the Abbey is generous in the amount of music it allows visiting choirs to perform. Sometimes in the past we have gone to a major parish church and found they only wanted two movements of a Mass setting, or none at all!
I am trying to find a weekend venue in 2011 while there is still choice, and have written to St Edmundsbury Cathedral.
Looking more locally, I received an invitation to sing Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts with the Frome Festival Chorus in February and as this work rarely comes round (though there has been talk of doing it round here ever since Mahler 8 in 2000) I am going to seize the chance this time. There is also an invitation to join the Chantry Singers for what will be their final Bach Festival in October 2010; I have expressed an interest in this, and will wait and hope that they are not already oversubscribed with sopranos. [Nov 29th: I’ve been told that at present they have enough sopranos, don’t know about vacancies for other voices]