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Details
St Andrew's Church
Church Lane
Westhall
Halesworth
Suffolk
IP19 8NU
England
Programme
Various – A cappella pieces
Performers
Vetta Wise – Conductor
Seraphim
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Suffolk’s highly acclaimed, all-female vocal group, Seraphim, have selected a very special cluster of north Suffolk village churches - each home to outstanding historic wall-paintings – for their spring musical pilgrimage.
The intimate and all-inclusive full day ‘pilgrimage’ features four mini-concerts of especially collected exquisite works for upper voices, hand-picked and presented to perfection by eminent director, Vetta Wise - a much admired and unique formula which has already wooed past ‘pilgrims’ as they enjoyed such ‘divinely different days’ out around Halesworth, Suffolk’s heritage coast, Bury St Edmunds and Norwich.
“Suffolk is so blessed with the amazing survival of medieval wall-paintings even in its tiniest and most rural churches,” enthuses Ms Wise, who lives near Halesworth and formed Seraphim in 2014. “When you look up at the faces, or let your eyes follow their stories, you can’t help wondering what it would sound like if these walls and their pictures could sing.” But this April’s pilgrims will need little imagination when the nine incredible voices of Seraphim fill the secret spaces of Holy Trinity Gisleham, St Botoph North Cove and St Andrew at Ilketshall and Westhall with their beautiful sounds of those times past.
Evocative soundscapes from Hildegard von Bingen to Fanny Mendelssohn will be complemented by more vernacular pieces acknowledging all the local walks of life of those who entered through these ancient Suffolk church doors. “As well as detailed paintings of The Passion, of saints or devices like the Wheel of Fortune, there are equally colourful though more down to earth patterns, and even reminders of daily life through personal inscriptions in the stone-work – what we’d today perhaps call graffiti. “
A gentle journey, an unhurried day of surprises and unique experiences, Seraphim’s musical pilgrimage includes morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch in a half-timbered coaching inn and escorted coach travel from a range of local pick-up points.
