Oxford Pro Musica Singers

Mark Jordan (conductor)

If music be the food of love …
A feast of choral music celebrating food and drink

The intimate auditorium of the Holywell Music Room is the venue for a banquet of music on the theme of food and drink, cordially hosted and performed by Oxford Pro Musica Singers.

Variety being the spice of a concert programme, ours will range from reverent celebrations of the eucharistic feast, with contrasting settings of O Sacrum Convivium by Tallis, Messiaen and Jackson as well as some majestic Lassus, Palestrina and Poulenc, to some rather cheekier numbers such as a rambunctious drinking song by Mendelssohn and the perky but tender Tea for Two. The centrepiece of the programme will be Bob Chilcott’s rarely heard song cycle Fragments from his Dish, six settings of an eclectic mix of texts beginning with a grace by Robert Herrick, going on to devour excerpts of Piers Plowman, Pepys’s diary and an eighteenth-century newspaper account of a record pie and ending with a bang inspired by G.K. Chesterton at his most rollicking.

We hope our musical feast will have a course to suit everyone, and that this evening of conviviality Oxford-Pro-Musica-style will cheer your February and leave you feeling fully satisfied.