Albion

Uniquely among choral groups, ALBION sings the musics of "these islands"– England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales - and further afield. The islands' musical heritage stretches back a thousand years, offering a rich store of treasures: dances, folksongs, madrigals, plainsong chants, airs, anthems, and more. In their variety and beauty, they lie at the heart of Albion's inspiration. JOIN OUR MAILING LIST BELOW - LAST BUTTON AFTER WEB SITE

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Sweet Transvestite Reimagined

Chance, Miscast and Musicals… who would have thought Sweet Transvestite would end up like this?

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Go and get it!

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Recital of Art Songs by two soloist in Sheffield with piano accompianment! Choose to listen!

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“One of my favourite songs is ‘Jerusalem’. This was one of the first six songs of Albion’s repertoire, and it is one of very few that have remained completely unchanged in the last four years. So often this is sung as a triumphant hymn, stomped out in church halls around the country, and the Albion arrangement gives that warm sense of patriotism, whilst challenging the singer listener to think about what it is the words are saying. It is a timeless and wonderful example of Albion in action.” - Benedict Rowe

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Jerusalem - that green and pleasant land in th UK?

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It will be very strange for us, and I am sure many of our listeners, to not have an Albion concert this Christmas. 

We have two sets of songs for our singers to learn, and one of them is purely festive music. This includes well known carols, such as an arrangement “Ding Dong Merrily on High”, “We Three Kings” and “Away in a Manger”. (Shown above is Andy, Benedict and Rob dressed as the three kings)

A lot of our pieces are traditional carols that aren’t as frequently sung. Songs like “The Salutation Carol”, “The Sussex Carol” and “The Castleton Carol” are among our favourites.

“’Ding Dong Merrily on High’ is one of my favourite pieces to sing with Albion. It’s so jazzy and unlike anything else that Albion sing. I love the element of surprise and the pleasure it brings both us and the audience.” - Amy Wright

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WISE MEN?

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On the second day of our Northampton and Oxfordshire mini-tour, we sang in Sutton Courteney for the English Music Festival. This was a beautiful church in a beautiful village in Oxfordshire. We enjoyed frolicking on the village green with a picnic, and glorious cakes provided by the church. 

For this concert, we performed a Vaughn Williams suite, which was made up of our arrangements of some of the folk songs he collected. This included pieces such as Greensleeves, I Heard The Voice, Linden Lea, Bonny Boy and Oliver Cromwell. 

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Day two

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“Going on tour in Oxforshire and Northamptonshire with everyone gave me an amazing sense of belonging. Great fun.” - Jeremy Thomas

Not only was this Jeremy’s first “Albion weekend” (wherever possible, we try to have concerts on consecutive days), but his first ever concert was in All Saints Church, Northampton, where Tilly spent 10 years as a chorister. Albion have been on lots of adventures around the country, and we have especially enjoyed visiting the hometowns of our singers. 

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Touring again

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Once upon a time, there were a group of singers who sang deep under a hillside in Derbyshire (have I mentioned that we sang in a cave?). This involved them scrabbling up slippery rocks, and finding their way through dark passages. They decided that the best way to guide themselves and others through the darkness would be to use lanterns. These lanterns travelled with them wherever they went, providing an extra bit of twinkle and an extra bit of magic to every performance. (They also helped keep their hands nice and toasty warm in especially cold venues)

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Underground

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“I love the “Invocation” because – Quaker or not – the words share important truths for living life well. Each time I sing them I feel challenged to live them out.” - Philippa Wilson

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“I love the “Invocation” because – Quaker or not – the words share important truths for living life well. Each time I sing them I feel challenged to live them out.” - Philippa Wilson

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What are we singing?

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When I asked Albion to give me some of their favourite memories, every single person mentioned something about our performances in Peak Cavern. (for more information, see the post from a couple of weeks ago with a video we made of our journey underground).

Wonderfully, the cave has a balcony that overlooks one of the chambers, that is not immediately visible. We used this to our advantage and in both sets of performances, had a singer stand and sing, so that the audience were not quite sure where the sound was coming from until they looked up. In 2014, Rob sang “Vidi Aquam” from this point, with the rest of Albion surrounding the audience, and in 2015 Martha sang “Jamie”.

“One of my favourite memories of Albion was having to run (carefully!) from the Devil’s Staircase to scramble up the side of the great cave in order to access the hidden corridor in time to regain my breath” - Martha Hayward

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Down in the Devil’s Arse

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“One of my favourite memories was during a performance of ‘Camelot’ as we were walking up Norfolk Street with Albion in our headphones, knowing that the few hundred people around us were – unknowingly –  listening to us too. It was utterly surreal.” - Philippa Wilson

In 2015, we recorded a few tracks for Sheffield People’s Theatre’s production of ‘Camelot’. This was a fantastic performance, which started in the Crucible theatre. The audience were then taken out into Tudor Square, with headphones on, where the action continued, and later the Peace Gardens. There were explosives, arguments, synchronised dramatic movements, flaming swords and occasionally in the background, occasionally the foreground, the sound of Albion through the headphones. We sang a number of pieces composed especially for the project by Heather Fenoughty.

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Abide with Me

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CONGRATULATIONS BECKY AND TOM! Today is their wedding day, and we are all very very very excited about it! 

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Here we are singing our “theme tune” in the Sheffield Millennium Galleries just before the Choral Celebration in Spring 2014

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Jerusalam

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Did you know that we performed at Tramlines 2015? We were a surprise act for a secret gig by SoFar Sounds, broadcast on their radio station across the world, featuring people like The Crookes. The performance was in a hip and trendy office space in the centre of Sheffield (have you noticed that Andy matches the walls perfectly?) It was an informal performance with the audience sprawled on the floor, sat on tables and office chairs – we sat among them, trying to blend in so that we could surprise everyone when we started singing. Just as the interval was announced, we began to sing Jerusalem. Martha started, and one by one we joined in. Seeing the audience look around excitedly, wondering what was happening, and wondering who would be the next to start singing was fantastic – especially their reaction when you DID start singing.

This was a wonderful gig to be part of – we got to perform to new audiences, and it was totally unlike anything we had done before. But then, we are rather fond of stepping out of our comfort zone.

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Albion on Tramlines

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“My favourite place to perform is Holy Trinity – the acoustic is beautiful and it’s always lovely sharing a performance with an audience full of friends!” - Philippa Wilson

Holy Trinity has been our home for many years, with our first concert there in Summer 2012. It is were we had the majority of our rehearsals, and recorded much of our three CD’s. Whenever we perform at Holy Trinity, we are hit with an overwhelming sense of support, and love for what we do. 

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Home pitch

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Here we are in April 2016, singing “Oliver Cromwell”. This is a piece that couldn’t help be rather…’agricultural’ every time we sang it, until at our first “Albion and Ales” concert at the Buxton Fringe festival 2015. With a pint in our hand, we suddenly managed to get it right, HUZZAH! Only problem was, once we had cracked it we missed the challenge of the interweaving parts, so we decided to sing it twice as quickly. In our performances from that point onwards, we sang it at the two speeds to show our progress (we we very proud!) and to continue challenging ourselves. By the time of our final concert on Saturday, a song that we had once seen as a mountain to overcome, was now second nature. The only natural response to this was to, obviously, speed it up again. This meant that the audience got to hear “Oliver Cromwell” not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES at THREE DIFFERENT SPEEDS!

(This is an image that improves with age. Really take your time to study each face individually. You will not regret it. Every time I look at it, I seem to enjoy it even more - Jenny)

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Oh my what speed