The first rehearsal of the 2010-11 season will be on Wednesday 8th September 2010. Our next concert on December 4th 2010 will be the two Carol Concerts.
You wll find a midi file on Handel's Acis and Galatea on John Hooper's Midi files. Just follow the links from his homepage (this is for the benefit of his hit rate counter) for Choral Music. He includes a lot of useful information about midi files. Another link from which you can download midi files to your PC is The Silvis Woodshed. You will need to scroll down quite a long way to the Handel entry. There is no midi file for this work on Cyberbass.com. I have not yet tried any of these files so cannot vouch for how good they are.
This is a link to the main Cyberbass music library The CyberBass Project from which you can download midi files. Click on Major Works and then click on the composer's name in the list that should come up. Then click on the title of the work (this is underlined, italicised and in green), and then click on the button for whichever voice you want to listen to. You may have to scroll down the screen a bit, and ignore what it says about Add to Cart. The little player will immediately play that vocal part, with the other voices muted. Use the controls in the player to pause, restart and stop it.
Midi files are not actual recordings but are sounds synthesised by your computer. The music is not a performance and it sounds mechanical and soulless but it's quite useful as an aid to practising at home. Here's a page I wrote a few years ago on using midi files: click here. Not all the works we do have been made into midi files but the number of midified scores seems to grow every year. As these files are stored on external sites there is no guarantee that they are virus-free and so I would urge everyone to have up-to-date virus-checking software and a firewall on their computers. If the work you want is not on any of the more well-known sites, you need to do a Google search on "Choral midi composer work" - in other words, if you want to see what other midi files exist on (for example) Mozart's Requiem apart from the one on Cyberbass.com, type in Choral midi Mozart Requiem and see what comes up. They do vary greatly in quality. Sometimes they don't seem to cover the entirety of the work in question, or miss out repeats, or simply fail to work properly, or they have not all been emphasised into Sop/Alt/Ten/Bass, etc.
Click here to read reviews in the press of some of our concerts.
If any of these links don't work, or if anything else needs attention, I would be grateful if you would send me an email at webadmin@uxbridgechoralsociety.org.uk
Alan Hilton is a choir member and composer whose compositions are available in MP3 format on his website. Click here to see his web page.
The Society is managed by honorary officers and committee members who are elected by choir members at the Annual General Meeting.
If you change your address, telephone number, e-mail or other contact details please make the Membership Secretary aware.
Except for our summer break (July/August), and Christmas break, the choir rehearses on Wednesday evenings from 7.45 to 9.45pm with a break at about 8.45pm for refreshments and socialising. If we need to rehearse at a different location the Secretary will make members aware in the notices.
Please make a commitment to attend rehearsals. You may miss some unavoidably, for good reason, but if you should miss a rehearsal you will need to find out what you have missed and to catch up at home. If you miss Jeff's instructions and then sing the music wrongly later, you may put off other singers who did learn it but are not yet confident, and this is unfair on them.
There are three sessions a year, each culminating in a concert: September/ January, February/May and May/July. Fees are £35, £35 & £25 a session respectively (if paid within one month, after which they become £40, £40 & £30). For concessions speak to the Treasurer.
We invite members who pay Income Tax to complete a Gift Aid form. The Society can reclaim tax which increases its income at no cost to the choir member.
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| Uxchor France 2007 photos |