London is a world city, home to many different faiths and ethnicities. It provides safety and prosperity for a diverse global population. Preserving this existence requires an active effort on the part of the people of London. Recent events make clear the importance of providing safe spaces for shared culture and the forging of a shared identity. Music provides one means of creating this kind of safe space. Our contribution is an interfaith festival that focusses on the human voice – Faithful Voices. We launched this festival in 2022, and are now returning for the second festival in 2024, in which we partner with musicians from different faith backgrounds for performances in synagogues and churches.
The festival includes a Come and Sing event and two concerts featuring both amateur and professional ensembles. The music performed represents aspects of Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism.
Please also note that the concert at West London Synagogue is currently only available via Livestream.
For information about the 2022 festival, visit our Past Performances page
Would you like to advertise in the 2024 festival brochure? If so, email advertising@zemelchoir.org
Programme for The Festival:
COME AND SING EVENT AT BELSIZE SQUARE SYNAGOGUE
May 26th 2pm – 5pmPrice £10
Join us for a Come and Sing event at Belsize Square Synagogue. This event focusses on music from the Jewish and Christian traditions, in particular psalm texts and texts from the Hebrew bible. We will be singing in both Hebrew and English, with music from the Renaissance to the modern day. This is a standalone event, and not connected to the later concerts, so feel free just to join us for the afternoon.
Repertoire will be guided by the strengths of the participants. The music choices include compositions by the Renaissance Italian Jewish Composer Salamone Rossi, the French Romantic composer Valentin Alkan, and contemporary Jewish composers Charles Osborne and Itai Daniel. From the Christian tradition we will look at works by John Rutter, Charles Villiers Stanford and C.H.H.Parry.
Some ability to read music will be helpful for this event, but it is not essential to have strong sight-reading ability.
BOOKING LINK: BOOKING LINK FOR COME AND SING
June 2nd 2024, 7pm, online concert broadcast from West London Synagogue
Price £15. Register via the link below. You will be emailed a link to view the concert.
BOOKING LINK: BOOKING FOR ONLINE ATTENDANCE AT THE WEST LONDON SYNAGOGUE
June 5th 2024, 7pm, concert at St Jude’s Church, Hampstead Garden Suburb
Price £15
Featuring:
The Zemel Choir
Barnet SACRE Interfaith Choir
The Choir of St Jude’s
Mohamed Ghrab (oud)
Divyanand Caird (Saraswati Veena) and Prathap Ramachandra (Mridangam)
The Mixed Up Chorus
Voice: Hamsa Mounif
Piano: Franklyn Gellnick
Conductors: Nicholas Chalmers, Jeremy Haneman, Alan Shaw, Benjamin Wolf
The final event of Faithful Voices 2024, this concert features music from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Hindu traditions. A mix of vocal and instrumental music, the concert includes Carnatic music from South India and Jewish/Islamic music from Tunisia. The Zemel Choir will perform canonic works of Jewish choral music, while the Mixed Up Chorus will sing songs from South Africa and Syria alongside their wonderful soloist, Hamsa Mounif. We welcome back Divyanand Caird and Prathap Ramachandra, representatives of South Indian music who enchanted the audience at Faithful Voices 2022. New performers include Mohamed Ghrab, an oud player from Tunisia, and local interfaith youth choir, the Barnet SACRE Interfaith Choir. The choir and choral scholars of St Jude’s will sing favourites by Tallis and Rutter, while the concert includes both popular and classical music ranging from the Renaissance to the present day.
BOOKING LINK: BOOKING LINK FOR CONCERT AT ST JUDE ON THE HILL
