Cadenza – One of Edinburgh’s leading amateur choirs

“An excellent performance”

At exactly 6.15pm yesterday (Monday 17th), John Brunning introduced the now annual Classic FM/Making Music Christmas collaboration to showcase “the most talented amateur musicians” in the UK. If you missed the live broadcast, you can catch up using the Classic FM player (we’re on about 1hr 11mins in) – but be quick, as it is only around for seven days!

From a “torrent of entries” this year, Making Music had selected an initial long list of 10, then narrowed it down to the final five, one of whom would be featured at 6.15pm every evening this week.

We had chosen, as our submission to Making Music, Kenneth Leighton’s beautiful and haunting arrangement of the 16th century “Coventry Carol”. It is a lullaby sung by the mothers of ‘doomed’ children, and was traditionally performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called “The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors”, depicting the story of Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Brunning described our performance as “excellent”.

We won’t know till the end of the week if there are any other ensembles from Scotland, but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that Scotland was represented again – and “excellently”. We were also delighted that Brunning didn’t forget to namecheck our two splendid soloists.

Tuesday 18 December 2018

Cadenza to feature on Classic FM again

Hot off the press, we are delighted to confirm that Cadenza has once again been selected as one for the final five Making Music groups to be broadcast on Classic FM Drive on Monday 17th December at around 6.15pm.

The remaining four winners have not been publicly announced, but we are proud and delighted to be at least one ensemble which will be flying the flag for Scotland. We are first up again, so tune in (100-102FM) or listen online to John Brunning’s Drive show on Monday 17th around 6.15pm to hear us. The other 4 finalists will be at the same time respectively Tuesday – Friday.

John will be playing another track from our popular Christmas CD Bright Star, a beautiful arrangement of a well-known carol, featuring two soloists from the soprano section of the choir, Lynne Samuel and Helen Heatlie. Tune in or listen again to find out which carol and what John Brunning has to say about it.

May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a good New Year in 2019!

Saturday 15 December 2018

“A superb evening of choral music” …

…that was what Tim Wilcock said about Cadenza at the Fringe 2018 in his review published on Fringe Review, in which he awarded us a ‘Highly Recommended Show” rating. He poured universal praise on the concert, from John Cameron’s arrangement of Elgar’s Lux Aeterna which was “a beautifully reflective opening, building to a sound that soared around this iconic Edinburgh venue” to Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater, where “the choir pulled off this difficult work with aplomb, with crisp, bright entries, superb diction and a rousing Amen“. The highlight of the concert, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms performed 100 years to the day since the composer’s birth, was recognised as “a fitting celebration of the event with a faultless performance”. Read more »