Summer Concert 2025
LOVE HOPE & PRIDE
Saturday 14 June 2025 7:30pm
St Giles Cripplegate, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DA
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Jan Rautio
After party
Please join us for a drink after the show at the Butchers Hook & Cleaver pub, 60-63 W Smithfield, London EC1A 9DY. Open to midnight.
Interval drinks
You can order interval drinks at any time before the show. Card payments only please.
Keep in touch
On social media, search #diversitychoir
Join us
We’re recruiting! And we’re developing our programme for Various Voices international LGBTQ+ music festival in Brussels in June 2026.
If you’d like to audition and join the fun, please contact: membership@diversitychoir.co.uk
MUSICAL NOTES
Locus Iste
Anton Bruckner (4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896)
Locus iste is the Latin gradual for the anniversary of the dedication of a church. (Locus iste a Deo factus est translates to “This place was made by God”). This is one of the most famous settings.The text is based on the biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder, where Jacob says “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not” (Genesis 28:16), and the story of the burning bush where Moses is told “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5).
Choral Dances from Gloriana
Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976)
Gloriana (1953), written to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II, had a cool reception at the gala premiere in the presence of the Queen and the British establishment en masse. Britten’s score and the downbeat story of Elizabeth I in her decline, was reportedly thought by members of the premiere’s audience “too modern” for such a gala and did not overcome what was called the “ingrained philistinism” of the ruling classes. Although Gloriana did well at the box office, there were no further productions in Britain for another 13 years. It was later recognised as one of Britten’s finer works.
Hear My Prayer, O Lord
Henry Purcell (c. 10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695)
Purcell was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream called The Fairy Queen.
Hear My Prayer, O Lord is an eight-part choral anthem and is a setting of the first verse of Psalm 102 in the version of the Book of Common Prayer. Purcell composed it c. 1682, at the beginning of his tenure as Organist and Master of the Choristers for Westminster Abbey. The composition is thought to have been intended to be part of a longer work.
As Torrents in Summer
Sir Edward William Elgar (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934)
Elgar was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches.
Scored for a cappella chorus, As Torrents in Summer is an excerpt from the epilogue of Sir Edward Elgar’s 1896 cantata, Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf, Op. 30. The text is an adaptation of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which tells the story of Olaf Tryggvason, the medieval king of Norway, who brought Christianity to the Scandinavian country. In As Torrents in Summer, the sustaining force of a far-off summer rainstorm, which refreshes dry riverbeds, becomes a metaphor for the unseen hand of God.
Amor Vittorioso
Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi (c. 1554 – 4 January 1609)
Gastoldi was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. His composition Amor Vittorioso is included in one of the two sets of his balletti, a strophic vocal dance. These were written for five voices, and contained passages of nonsense syllables (e.g. “fa la la”) which seemed to personify a type of lover and love-making.
Fair Phyllis
John Farmer (c. 1570 – c. 1601)
Farmer was born in England during the Elizabethan period, and was known by his skilful settings for four voices of the old church psalm tunes. Fair Phyllis, I saw sitting all alone is a jocular four-part English madrigal published in 1599 by William Barley in a collection entitled The First Set of English Madrigals to Four Voices.
Phyllis and Amyntas, the central figures in the madrigal, would have been familiar to Farmer’s Elizabethan audience, having become synonymous with shepherds and shepherdesses in a pastoral setting. Characters with their names could be found in ancient literature, such as the Eclogues of Virgil, where they appear in an Arcadian landscape.
The Rhythm of Life (from Sweet Charity)
Words Dorothy Fields, Music Cy Coleman, Arr Roger Emerson
Sweet Charity is a musical with book by Neil Simon, based on the screenplay for the 1957 Italian film Nights of Cabiria. In 1966 it was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon as a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall, alongside John McMartin.
In the musical, the song is performed by the character Big Daddy, the leader of an alternative ‘hippie’ religious group/cult called the ‘Rhythm of Life Church’. In the 1969 movie musical adaptation of Sweet Charity the song is performed by Sammy Davis Jr, who co-stars as Big Daddy in the film.
INTERVAL
Molitva Za Ukrainu (Prayer for Ukraine)
Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko (22 March 1842 – 6 November 1912)
Prayer for Ukraine is a patriotic Ukrainian hymn published in 1885, which became a spiritual anthem of Ukraine. The text was written by Oleksandr Konysky, and the music was composed by Mykola Lysenko, first with a children’s choir in mind. It has recently been part of church services internationally, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Lysenko is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival. By studying and drawing from Ukrainian folk music, promoting the use of the Ukrainian language, and separating himself from Russian culture, his compositions form what many consider the quintessential essence of Ukrainian music.
Hear My Prayer
Felix Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847)
Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which includes his Wedding March).
Mendelssohn wrote many smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir. Among the most famous is Hear My Prayer, whose second half contains O for the Wings of a Dove, which is often performed as a separate piece. Mendelssohn’s biographer Todd comments, “The very popularity of the anthem in England […] later exposed it to charges of superficiality from those contemptuous of Victorian mores.”
KIT KAT KLUB
All That Jazz
Music John Kander, Lyrics Fred Ebb
All That Jazz is a song from the 1975 musical Chicago. The title of the 1979 film, starring Roy Scheider as a character strongly resembling choreographer/stage and film director Bob Fosse, is derived from the song. Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives postulated that the song encapsulated the “importance of jazz in the constitution of pop culture” and describes it as a “cynical comment on the willingness of humans…to act solely, simply, and remorselessly in their own interest”.
Being Alive
Stephen Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) arr Jan Rautio
Being Alive is a song from the musical Company. Situated at the end of the second act, the song expresses the central character Robert’s concerns as he faces his 35th birthday. Robert realises being a lone wolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and declares he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken—or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved.
Prior to singing Being Alive, Robert reflects on the relationships of five couples, his “good and crazy married friends” and with three of his girlfriends. While each relationship has its problems, Robert concludes that it’s better to live with someone rather than remain alone.
I Am What I Am
Jerry Herman (July 10, 1931 – December 26, 2019), arr Jan Rautio
I Am What I Am is a song originally introduced in the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles. The song is the finale number of the musical’s first act, and performed by the character of Albin Mougeotte.
The song was released as a single by Gloria Gaynor in 1983 and went on to become one of the singer’s best-known songs. Producer Joel Diamond recognized the song’s disco potential when he saw La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway and arranged for Gaynor to record it. It became established as a global gay anthem and a Top 40 hit throughout Europe.
Cabaret
Music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Joe Masteroff. arr Jan Rautio
The original Broadway production of Cabaret opened on November 20, 1966. It is based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten, which in turn was based on the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.
Set in 1929–1930 Berlin during the twilight of the Jazz Age as the Nazis rise to power, the musical focuses on the hedonistic nightlife at the seedy Kit Kat Klub and revolves around American writer Clifford Bradshaw’s relations with English cabaret performer Sally Bowles.