Author: dac3uk

10 December: join us for a song, mince pie and a drink!

5:30pm: 10 December

An event to get us all into the spirit of Christmas and enjoy some festive warmth in this cold season! We’re inviting everyone to put on a Santa hat and round off the Christmas shopping on Saturday 10th December (5.30pm) with a bang.

We are supporting the fund for a new organ to inspire our 30 organ and keyboard students at St Giles’ (you can hear one of them on 4 December!)

Join us for a drink, a mince pie and a hour’s festive singalong (or dancing in the aisles) to some traditional and not-so-traditional seasonal music – all to the accompaniment of the St Giles’ organ! Tickets are £5 per adult (over 16) or £8 for a family including two adults, and include a drink and a mince pie. Further refreshments will also be on sale.

Cash or cards accepted or buy online via Eventbrite or below

Buy Tickets Here!

Register on Eventbrite

Zihan Wang Piano Recital: 4 December raises nearly £900 for Project 900

Long-standing St Giles’ chorister, 11 year old Zihan Wang, gave a programme of piano music at St Giles on 4 December at 4:30 p.m. The concert raised nearly £900.

Zihan holds an ABRSM Diploma and is a recipient of a Young Organ Scholars’ Trust bursary. He won the organ competition and the Chopin competition in the Oxford Music Festival.

All proceeds from this concert will go towards the construction of a new pipe organ in the church, which will be used to train the next generation of young musicians in Oxfordshire as part of the St Giles’ Music Academy.

Preview:

Schubert, Improvviso

Recording at concert:

N.B. Original recording setting is not high- you will need to adjust your volume (control)

Live recording from concert on 4 December
  • Faure, Romances sans paroles
  • Chopin, Nocturne in c# minor
  • Chaminade, Pierrette air de ballet
  • Copland, The cat and the mouse
  • Schubert, Improvviso
  • Haydn, Piano Sonata No 3 in Eflat major
  • J S Bach, Prelude and Fugue in G minor

Budapest Café Orchestra concert raised over £1,000 at St Giles’ on 3 December

The popular Budapest Café Orchestra, led by Chris Garrick, played at St Giles’ on 3rd December. Over £1,000 was raised towards the appeal.

“Not so much a band name as a whole genre of its own, Budapest Café Orchestra embraces an encyclopaedia of music and mischief.” SCOTSMAN

‘Back by popular demand, the fiery vivacity and awe-inspiring musicianship of the finest purveyors of Eastern European gypsy music this side of a Lada scrap heap will leave you with a grin on your face and rhythm in your feet” TIMES

“The Budapest Café Orchestra play a blistering barrage of Czardas, East European and Russian folk tunes that might have come from the Hot Club of Paris via the Orient Express!” Brighton Argus

“The Music is Magic the their hands.” Sean Rafferty, BBC Radio 3.

15 October’s Organ Marathon to be launched by Oxfordshire’s High Sheriff

30 organ students at St. Giles’ along with distinguished guest organists will provide a showcase for their musical talent on 15 October at St. Giles’ Church.

An Organ Marathon, lasting around 7 hours and starting at 2:00pm, will be launched by Oxfordshire’s High Sheriff, Mr Mark Beard.

Afternoon free recitals

  • 14:05 James Andrews of New College
  • 14:35 St Giles’ Organ students followed by Katherine Pardee, Andrew Patterson, Mitchell

Evening Concert

The day’s music will conclude with a concert by two students of St Giles’ Music Academy at 7:30pm. They will present a varied programme of organ music.

Here’s a sample played by one of our students, Zihan Wang.

Recitalists:

  • Benjamin Gronlie
  • Zihan Wang

Music by Frescobaldi, Mendelssohn, Bach

John Forster, ‘Orgelwerke’

‘Orgelwerke comprises a set of three preludes and fugues in a pastiche retro-Baroque style, with each being modelled on pieces by Heinrich Scheidemann, Dietrich Buxtehude, or J. S. Bach, and composed using new German organ tablature rather than modern staff notation. The project combines sampled pipe organs and recreations of the synthesiser patches devised by Wendy Carlos for Switched-On Bach in 1968, which are then distributed among 24 separate loudspeakers placed around the performance space. Orgelwerke is about exploring notions of (in)authenticity in relation to new organ works and electronic organ sound, and the result is something that’s intended to feel conspicuously faux-historical.

John is currently studying for a PhD in Composition at City, University of London. The title of his research is ‘What is a Pipe Organ Work?’, and he’s focussing on how the ways in which different people conceptualise the pipe organ can lead to different approaches to creating pipe organ works. John has had a lifelong interest in the pipe organ, and after starting lessons as a chorister, spent a couple of summers as a teenager working at Henry Willis & Sons Ltd. in Liverpool. While studying for a Music degree at the University of Oxford, John was organ scholar at Brasenose College and St. Giles’ Parish Church, subsequently taking a gap year during which he sang bass in Rochester Cathedral Choir. Following a digression studying for an MSc in Global Politics at Durham University, then working for an ESG research firm in London and musicking in his spare time, John realised he wasn’t that into offices after all and so decided to embark on a doctorate.’

Tickets £10.00 and £5.00. Children free of charge.

Register on Eventbrite

Young musicians of St Giles Jubilee concert on 5 June 2022 raised £3,840 for the new organ

The concert on Sunday, 5 June, at 12:00 to celebrate Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee raised £3,840 for the new organ. It will feature some of the church’s young musicians. It featured some of our young musicians and there was high standard of performance. It was a lovely occasion, as was remarked by several members of the congregation.

It’s not too late to raise a little more! To contribute please visit:

Midsummer Music – 25 June 2022

Project 900 concert – Midsummer Music: an eclectic and varied concert of music performed by some of the ‘back row’ musicians of St Giles’ will take place on Saturday 25th June at 7.00pm. Refreshments will be served, and tickets available on the door (including card payments). Please do come and enjoy a midsummer evening of music with us, in support of Project 900.

Midsummer music from St Giles’

25th June 2022, 7.00pm

Accompanists: Peter Ward Jones and Nicholas Prozzillo

John Pusey (tower captain of St Giles’), Sara Jones, Joe Norton, Lindsay Powell

Plain Bob Triples

*           *           *

Jonathan Mitchell (baritone)

Welcome

Silent Noon – Ralph Vaughan Williams

Linden Lea – Ralph Vaughan Williams

*           *           *

Patrick Tan (counter-tenor), John Buckley (tenor) and Mike Geary (bass)

Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale – William Cornysh

En l’ombre d’un buissonnet – Josquin Desprez

Pastime with Good Company – Henry VIII

*           *           *

John Pusey (tower captain of St Giles’), Sara Jones, Joe Norton, Lindsay Powell

Kent Treble Bob Major

*           *           *

John Buckley (tenor)

A Chloris – Reynaldo Hahn

Vaga luna que inargenti – Vincenzo Bellini

Annabel Lee – Henry Leslie

*           *           *

Freddy Chelsom (baritone)

Danza, danza, fanciulla – Francesco Durante

An die Musik – Franz Schubert

Au bord de l’eau – Gabriel Fauré

Register for the concert here

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Georgia Russell – Viola: Sunday 29 May raised £300 for new organ fund

The programme was:

  • Enescu – Konzertstuck for viola and piano
  • Hindemith – Sonata for viola and piano op. 11 no. 4
  • Purcell – Chacony in G minor
  • Kenji Bunch – The 3 Gs
  • Mark Russell – For Lise

Georgia’s Russell’s programme was wide-ranging, technically demanding and very exciting. The Kenji Bunch was like a Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page guitar solo. The Purcell Chaconny was dramatic and mournful, the Enescu a typical virtuosic showpiece and the Hindemith lean and sinuous with incredible musical line. Mark Russell wrote ‘For Lise’ when his sister died in 2015 – it’s haunting, like an unanswered question.

Retiring collection was in aid of the Project 900 St Giles Organ Appeal

Georgia Russell

Trio Amici raises £470 for Project 900

Beethoven Piano Trio C minor op.1 no.3
Mendelssohn Piano Trio D minor op. 49

Trio Amici is an exciting and energetic group formed by three successful professional musicians from various branches of the musical world, whose paths have now converged in the Oxford area. Their individual expertise and experience, combined with their passion and enjoyment for performing chamber music, is establishing their prestigious reputation with local audiences. Performing an eclectic repertoire, spanning the Classicism of Beethoven and Schubert, the Romanticism of Brahms and Mendelssohn, through to the French Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel with a dash of tango!

The concert raised funds for the new organ at St Giles’ Church by supporting the Project 900 appeal