Counterpoint

Our sister choir, The King’s Counterpoint in South Carolina, are touring Brittany in July. They already have three concerts in the pipeline, with just the fourth one to finalise! They are singing in Locmaria on the banks of the Odet at Quimper. The second venue is Loctudy, where Counterpoint used to stay when on tour in Brittany, and the third church is at La Foret-Fouesnant.

The church in Quimper traces its history back to when the Nave was constructed in the 11th century. The church at Loctudy is from the late 1000s to the early 1100s, whilst the church at La Foret-Fouesnant was built in the early 1500s. Counterpoint has sung at all the churches from the early 1990s through to 2011. The acoustics are superb, and the character and beauty of the buildings are second-to-none.

The choir is beavering away raising the final amounts of money needed to complete the trip, and if anyone would like to donate to help them reach thier final goal, they would be extremely grateful. David says, …’it is going to be a singular honour to represent South Carolina in bringing the best of sacred a ca****la music to our Breton audiences, and I truly can’t wait to hear these ancient and much-loved buildings echoing to the very best that the Low Country has to offer, when it comes to choral music.’

Our sister-choir in America, The King’s Counterpoint, is very excited to have been invited to take part in a commission for a new 40-minute choral work. 2025 will be the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons; to mark this, David says: ‘Joanna Forbes L'Estrange has given herself the challenge of making Vivaldi’s wonderful music singable by choirs by adding words from poetry (including Emily Brontë, Henry Alford and Robert Frost) and from the Bible. The piece is called A Season To Sing and is scored for choir, string quartet or organ/piano. As you can hear from the attached clip from Joanna, the work includes beautiful choral writing and harmonies, and choirs are also required to use more than their voices at times!

The Four Seasons is ‘bookended’ by Joanna’s music, where she is using the text from Ecclesiastes 3 - To everything there is a season. In the clip there are several realised recordings to give one a flavour of the music and the themes being used.

We are in the process of negotiating a very special premiere performance of the work for next Summer.

Joanna is still working on the piece, and we can’t wait to see finished copies of A Season to Sing in December of this year.’

'A Season to Sing' by Joanna Forbes L'Estrange - a choral re-imagining of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons In conversation with the composer about her new 40-minute choral work A Season to Sing, composed to mark the 300th anniversary in 2025 of the publication of ...

David says: ‘In my search for collating past recordings from concerts, it has become an almost insurmountable task. There are now over 45 concerts to work through, and decide what is acceptable enough to be posted. Is YouTube or SoundCloud.
Last year I received the first selection of sheet music, recordings, CDs, DVDs, ornaments and pirctures from England. Amongst this vast collection there were CDs of live recordings taken from Counterpoint concerts in Buckfast Abbey and Exeter Cathedral.
I was intrigued to come across the recording of a concert on 6th July 2013. It was the last full concert for Counterpoint that I was involved with. It was unusual because it consisted of all modern music. One of the pieces was Ola Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass. I’m just starting to unravel the files and this is the last part of the first movement, The Spheres (Kyrie). Divertimento was the string ensemble. Click on the link below to hear the final two minutes of the piece. Keep the volume up and listen to the choir’s entry at around 42 seconds into the clip - it is wonderful!’

Excerpt - The Spheres (Kyrie from Sunrise Mass, Ola Gjeilo) Counterpoint David E. A. Acres, Musical Director Live Concert Recording excerpt - "Mysterium" - Saturday 6th July 2013 with Divertimento string ensemble Buckfast Abbey, Devon, England

The King's Counterpoint's concert at the Cathedral of St. Luke & St. Paul is only ten days away, on Sunday, 12th June at 2.00pm. The concert is entitled 'America's Music 1650-1899 - Choral Music that Shaped a Country.' The choir trace the changes that came about during this 250 year period, with many unique and rare works, discovered and re-written especially for the concert. Included is this beautiful piece by Jonathan Spilman.
Jonathan Edwards Spilman was a Kentucky lawyer, minister, and composer, and graduated from Illinois College in 1835. While at Transylvania Law School, 1837, he wrote the music for Robert Burns' "Flow gently, sweet Afton," the best-remembered of his seven melodies. An adaptation of this music was used in one of the tunes to "Away in a Manger." He was married to Mary V.J. Menefee, who died in 1843. Two years later, on 10 April 1845, he married Eliza Sarah Taylor (1822–1866), a niece of U.S. President Zachary Taylor. They had ten children, of whom six survived: Charles, Louise, William, Byrd, Clara, and Lewis. His wife Eliza died on 10 August 1866, as the result of a fire aboard the steamboat Bostona No. 3 in Maysville, Kentucky. Working as a lawyer for 18 years, he became Presbyterian minister at the age of 46. A Historical Marker was erected in the city of Greenville in his memory.
Tickets can be purchased from members of the choir or via the ensemble's website.

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton (1837) - Jonathan Spilman Jonathan Edwards Spilman was a Kentucky lawyer, minister, and composer, and graduated from Illinois College in 1835. While at Transylvania Law School, 1837, ...

Tickets are already selling well, over in the U.K., for our concert in Buckfast Abbey, England, next month. The Abbey’s website says:

David Acres returns to Buckfast after a seven year break with his choir from South Carolina, The King’s Counterpoint, members of their sister choir Contrapunctus from Cleveland, Ohio and also, members of Counterpoint, who used to regularly sing here at the Abbey for 28 years. The choirs join together to bring a wonderfully eclectic choice of sacred choral music by composers including Anton Bruckner, Moses Hogan, Diogo Melgaz. Frank Ticheli, William Billings, Herbert Sumsion, and two premier works written for the choir by Graham Keitch.

The King’s Counterpoint
David Acres director
David Davies organ

Last year, our sister choir The King’s Counterpoint were supposed to be singing the week’s service in Canterbury Cathedral in early August, but the regulations surrounding covid had put a stop to our visit.
We received a request from our dear friend Ian Roberts, who deals with visiting choirs to the cathedral, and the choir gathered together on 23rd July at the Bishop Gadsden Retirement Community Chapel to record three anthems/motets and 3 psalms to forward to Ian, that would be used at three services in the cathedral during the week that we had intended being there.
Twenty-four members of the choir attended that Saturday morning, and the resulting recordings have not been enhanced or engineered in an way. The superb acoustics in the chapel speak for themselves.
Paul Thompson edited these six pieces and David will post all the recordings over the next couple of weeks.

Salve Regina - Diogo Dias Melgás (1638-1700) The King's CounterpointMusical Director David E. A. AcresRecorded July, 2021, at Bishop Gadsden Chapel, James Island, South Carolina