South London Singers

About the show

We want to welcome the whole community to our concert this Christmas - so we have decided to make tickets for this concert free as in the last two years. However, please do reserve your place to avoid disappointment. Do this by going to our online box office.
If you are able to afford to give a donation towards our event costs and would like to do so, you can do this either in advance at the box office website or by cash or card at the door.

The main work this time will be the much-loved ‘Fantasia on Christmas Carols’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams. As the basis for the piece, he picks three carols recorded during the early 20th Century movement to collect traditional folk songs before they were lost. The work rises and falls in tempo and volume as it tells aspects of the Christmas story. It starts and ends quietly (if you think the choir have gone on strike, the final marking is ‘pppp’!)
The S.L.S. will also be including a number of shorter carols including Herbert Howells’ beautiful setting of ‘A Spotless Rose’, based on words which may date back as far as the 14th Century. This poem makes analogy between, on the one hand, a perfect rose bud borne by a strong root, flowering in the cold, and Christ and the Virgin Mary on the other.

Needless to say, amongst other items by the choir, there will also be opportunities for the audience to join in (loudly!)