A final musical event for the term, Carols Round The Tree yesterday saw members of the University community gathering near the Registry Garden tree to sing together, supported this year by a fine brass group comprising students and staff.

Forged in the fiery furnace of rehearsals in Eliot by Music Scholar and Architecture student Chris Gray, the twelve-piece brass group accompanied the assembled singers filling the chilly air with carols, and also gave lively renditions of seasonal favourites including ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and ‘Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer.’ Kent Hospitality supplied mulled wine and roast chestnuts, and the Estates team had heroically braved the plummeting temperatures earlier in the day to set up a lighting rig and suitable electrics. The student group Sing!, conducted by Maia Peacock, sang a piece, as did the Chamber Choir.

It’s always a particularly special occasion, when people spontaneously gather to see out the term in festive style, a chance for one final sing before the term ends. It didn’t snow this year, but never mind!

Thank you to everyone involved in Kent’s music-making over the past term: it all starts again in January; watch out for our new events brochure on the website early next month.

The musicians of the university are nothing if not adventurous. The culture of ‘flashmob’ events, where performances arise, apparently spontaneously, in public places to entertain (or bemuse) unsuspecting members of the public, who go from being passers-by or shoppers to audience-members, is a growing phenomenon. Singers from the University entertained (or bemused) assembled visitors and diners in Rutherford College yesterday, to bring Christmas cheer and highlight the musical culture of the University community.

Singers from the Chamber Choir, Cecilian Choir and Sing! (plus the Director of Music) amassed in Rutherford College courtyard earlier today, grabbed carol books, and scurried in to the dining-hall, where they crouched, like Agents of Subversion, leafed through the books to find the right page, and then leapt up as one to sing an array of carols in rich, four-part harmony.

A lady from Rutherford Reception burst in, issuing a demand: that we go out into the courtyard and sing where staff in Reception and offices arrayed around the courtyard could also hear. Thus summoned, we duly gathered around the palm-tree (what season are we in ?!) and sang for the college staff.

The flash-mob style was then developed one stage further: in the break between one batch of Open Day visitors departing and the next set arriving, we went back down into the dining-hall and sat at tables, as though we were visitors ourselves. At a pre-arranged signal, when most of the visitors were similarly seated for lunch, we rose from five of the tables to sing the last selection of carols, to an enthusiastic reception.

Great fun; a way of making music on an informal footing for fun, and to showcase some of the music-making that goes on at Kent to prospective applicants.

Well done to everyone who participated: same thing again next term – without carols, obviously – keep your eyes peeled for details in the Spring…

The Chamber Choir ended their term in fine style, performing three pieces as part of the University’s Carol Service in Canterbury Cathedral.

Click here to find out how they got on.

It’s been twelve years since the Choristers of Canterbury Cathedral were invited to perform in the Lunchtime Concert series, and the auspices were not good: last time, fourteen of the twenty-two boys succumbed to seasonal flu and the concert had to be cancelled – the only time a lunchtime concert has been called off.

This time, however, fortune favoured them, and they performed a varied programme, ranging from the warmth of Caribbean calypso to the chill of winter, to a highly enthusiastic audience.

They began with the Baroque, opening with a bright rendition of Purcell’s ‘Sound the Trumpet’ from Come Ye Sons of Art, and Vivaldi’s motet ‘Nulla in mundo pax sincera.’ Thence to Jamaica, with local composer Brian Kelly’s setting of the ‘Magnificat,’ which features calypso rhythms in the accompaniment, and was delivered with a great sense of rhythmic vitality.

Stanford’s ‘Song of Peace’ from the Four Bible Songs gave the first intimation of the Advent season, with a brief quotation from the opening of the melody to ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel,’ before winter truly arrived with Chilcott’s Midwinter, a setting of the text of ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ in Chilcott’s trademark sugary harmonic style.

The Choristers then rode a jolly romp through ‘As I outrode the endless night’ before the more contemplative ‘I wonder as I wander’ by Richard Lloyd, a lyrical meditation on the familiar melody.

Finally, the boys broke ranks and arrayed themselves around the Gulbenkian stage to sing the popular ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ in a setting that scattered the individual lines around the singers, grouped in ones and twos; the last occurrence of the partridge in a pear tree needed a second attempt, in order to finish on a final flourish which the young chap singing it forgot first time round, but the audience didn’t mind: he’d sung it so many times around, who could blame him ?

Rapturous applause from a delighted crowd brought forth a lively encore, Love Changes Everything, delivered in ebullient style.

Conducted throughout with great craft by Director of the Choristers, David Flood, and accompanied with terrific sensitivity on the piano by Simon Lawford, this was a fine finale to the term’s lunchtime series. The Choristers are heading into their own musical Christmas rush: we wish them well.