Sussex Occasional Singers

Autumn Colours 

All Saints Church, Highbrook
Saturday 12 October 2019

Sussex Occasional Singers returned to Highbrook Church for their annual choral, vocal and instrumental autumn concert. The intriguing and highly varied programme included JS Bach's cantata Wachet Auf and Handel's famous coronation anthem Zadok the Priest plus a repeat performance of The Third Millenium (2013), a three-movement choral and orchestral setting by the choir's director Simon Austin of texts by local writer and poet Nick Nye exploring ways in which beliefs we hold affect our daily lives, our dreams and our visions. There were also the world premieres of two new works by Austin: His End Was... for unaccompanied flute and Summoned for soprano, flute and string quintet to a recent text by Nye.

Soloists included singers Mark Beesley and Helen Underwood-Lewis, flautist Ivor Humphreys and harpist Anna Wynne with Autumnal Strings lead by George Clifford.

Sussex Occasional Singers has grown out of The Sussex Cantorum, a chamber choir active from 1992 until 2016 and famed for the performance of a wide repertoire, ranging from early and baroque music through to 20th and 21st century English compositions.