Making a real difference to people's lives

A Foreword by Peter Farrant, Music Director of Reigate and Redhill Choral Society

Reigate and Redhill Choral Society is one of the longest-established community-based charities in the area with a thriving membership, diverse range of activities, proven track record, and reputation for making a real difference to people's lives.

In recent years the Society has achieved critical acclaim and recognition for exciting, adventurous programming and creation of new opportunities for the benefit of the wider community including development workshops, festivals, partnerships, tours, recordings, and education initiatives.

The main objectives of our Community Development Programme are:

To help greater numbers of individuals develop through music
To strengthen links with organisations within the community
To improve provision for those isolated by circumstance
To increase awareness of the value and enjoyment of singing
To promote high-quality experiences
To enable individuals to strengthen and develop their knowledge and skills
To combine innovation with tradition, presenting new and unusual repertoire alongside mainstream works, with particular emphasis on British composers

Ticket Tasters was launched as part of our 65th anniversary celebrations, and designed to enable schools, colleges, and those living in either sheltered housing or warden-assisted accommodation the opportunity to experience a memorable live performance at Dorking Halls on Saturday 1 July 2006.

Full of explosive drama and energy, Mozart's powerful Requiem and colourful Ave Verum featured alongside Mendelssohn's vibrant Italian Symphony and Arnold's brilliantly high-spirited Serenade for Orchestra, celebrating his 85th birthday. World famous British composer Bob Chilcott personally introduced the premiere of The Face of Peace, an exciting new work commissioned by the Society, with support from the PRS Foundation, to mark our 65th anniversary season. During the interval, participants in the Ticket Taster scheme had the opportunity to meet some of the performers.

Sound Bites builds upon the Ticket Taster scheme with the provision of additional education and training workshops prior to an exciting performance at The Harlequin Theatre, Redhill on Saturday 30 June 2007.

This concert will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Edward Elgar's birth with a programme including his Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 (performed each year at the Last Night of the Proms), his emotional setting of the Ave Verum Corpus, and The Music Makers, his last major choral work, in which his popular major achievements are celebrated with musical quotes from some of his most famous works - the Enigma Variations, The Dream of Gerontius, Sea Pictures, his Violin Concerto and his first and second symphonies, to name but a few.

For a list of Elgar websites, visit our Elgar webpage.

The concert also includes Rachmaninov's expressive Symphony No.2, Walton's exhilarating Crown Imperial March and Parry's spectacular settings of I Was Glad and Jerusalem.

Further details of the concert, including biographies of the soloists, are available on our forthcoming events page.

Reigate and Redhill Choral Society are grateful to Legal and General for their generous support of this scheme.

For further information: call 01737 772811 or email info@rrcs.org.uk
	Reigate & Redhill Choral Society is affiliated to Making Music: The National Federation of Music Societies and gratefully acknowledges support received from the Borough of Reigate & Banstead Arts Council. Registered Charity No 280195

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