Music

worship and performance at Downing Place

Music at Downing Place URC

Music is a key part of our life here at Downing Place.

Whether it is the music we hear and engage with in our services, concerts and performances we facilitate, choirs that use our rooms to rehearse and perform in, or events put on by hirers, we are committed to prioritising music and it’s influence on worship, wellbeing and fellowship.

MUSIC IN WORSHIP

When our online services began in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, our musicians stepped up to the challenge of presenting a great variety of musical pieces each week, to accompany worship and to provide a sensitive and inspiring background for our reflection.

Over time, we have acquired a ‘library’ of these pieces which deserve to be heard in their own right, featuring not only our own talented Directors of Music, Mark Dawes and Ian de Massini; but our minister Nigel Uden and other church members.

Click below to visit our gallery of pieces which have been performed by our own Downing Place musicians as part of our worship.

2024 – 2025 Lunchtime Concerts

We run a Lunchtime Concert series throughout the year, on most Mondays and Wednesdays at 1pm.

Entry is free and booking is not necessary; doors open at around 12.30pm.  We take a retiring collection at the end of the concert for our monthly charity.

You can find out more about each individual concert by clicking the photographs below, where you will also find details of each programme as receive them.

The London Piano Duo (Connor Heraghty & Daisy Ou)

Monday 2nd December 2024 at 1pm

 

Chris Hill (flute) & Amy Butler (piano)

Wednesday 4th December 2024 at 1pm

 

Yinglun Wong (piano)

Monday 9th December 2024 at 1pm

 

Stephen Axford (organ)

Wednesday 11th December 2024 at 1pm

 

Clara Sherratt (piano)

Monday 16th December 2024 at 1pm

 

Cambridge Voices Christmas Concert

Wednesday 18th December 2024 at 1pm

 

Symphonia Academica Duo

Wednesday 8th January 2025 at 1pm

 

Ian de Massini (organ)

Monday 13th January 2025 at 1pm

 

James Williams

Wednesday 15th January 2025 at 1pm

 

Divine Simbanegavi (mezzo-soprano) & Isaac Chan (piano)

Monday 20th January 2025 at 1pm

 

Connor Fogel (piano)

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 at 1pm

 

Erdesz Viola Trio

Monday 27th January 2025 at 1pm

 

Tim Palmer (tenor) and Hugh Taylor (piano)

Wednesday 29th January 2025 at 1pm

 

Andy Mellor (clarinet) & Angela Novy (piano)

Monday 3rd February 2025 at 1pm

 

Ely Music Collective

Wednesday 5th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Flora Clapham (violin) & Isaac Chan (piano)

Monday 10th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Richard Carr (piano) with the aLUMNI Chamber Orchestra

Wednesday  12th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Yoko Sakakura (piano)

Wednesday 19th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Felicity Hamilton (soprano) and Charlie Penn (piano)

Monday 24th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Simon Watterton (piano)

Wednesday 26th February 2025 at 1pm

 

Bonnie Cooper (soprano) & Ian de Massini (piano)

Monday 3rd March 2025 at 1pm

 

Simeon Walker (piano)

Wednesday 5th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Nicole Zwier (soprano) and Marion Caldwell (piano)

Monday 10th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Cambridge University Brass Ensemble

Wednesday 12th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Tobias Brook (piano)

Monday 17th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Raphael Brandman (piano)

Wednesday 19th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Seth Schultheis (piano)

Monday 24th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Ian de Massini & Anne Page (organ)

Wednesday 26th March 2025 at 1pm

 

Tony Bridgewater (piano)

Monday 31st March 2025 at 1pm

 

The Ammenti Trio

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 at 1pm

 

Andrew Garrido (piano)

Monday 7th April at 1pm

 

Francesca Villani (piano)

Wednesday 9th April 2025 at 1pm

 

Flora Tzanetaki (piano) and Paul Harris (clarinet)

Monday 14th April 2025 at 1pm

 

Eduard Sanchez (flute)

Wednesday 16th April at 1pm

 

No Lunchtime Concert

Monday 21st April 2025 at 1pm

 

Paula Muldoon & Christopher Lin-Brande (violin duo)

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 at 1pm

 

Felicia Toni (piano)

Monday 28th April at 1pm

 

No Lunchtime Concert

Monday 5th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Joanna Lam (piano)

Wednesday 7th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Zhimiao Geng & Phoebe Liu (piano)

Monday 12th May at 1pm

 

Alex Clare-Young (clarsach) & Jane Bower (spoken word)

Wednesday 14th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Dylan Latham (violin) and Mihaly Gyorfi (piano)

Monday 19th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Adrian Oldland (piano)

Wednesday 21st May at 1pm

 

No Lunchtime Concert

Monday 26th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Titika Maragoula (soprano) and Richard Carr (piano)

Wednesday 28th May 2025 at 1pm

 

Harriet Flather (clarinet) & Jennifer Walsh (piano)

Wednesday 4th June 2025 at 1pm

 

Guiseppe Sortino (piano)

Monday 9th June 2025 at 1pm

 

T.B.C.

Wednesday 18th June 2025 at 1pm

 

Ivan Hovorun (piano)

Monday 23rd June at 1pm

 

Osman Tack (piano)

Wednesday 25th June 2025 at 1pm

 

Galina Umanskaya (piano)

Monday 30th June 2025 at 1pm

 

No Lunchtime Concert

Wednesday 2nd July at 1pm

 

JOIN THE DOWNING PLACE CHOIR

Downing Place Choir
–
always open to all!

Downing Place has a thriving choir of singers drawn exclusively from the membership of the church and who present a choral introit and anthem as part of our morning worship normally once a month.

Their repertoire is chosen especially to illuminate Downing Place’s particular style of worship, and the choir is always led by one of our talented directors of music, Ian de Massini or Mark Dawes.

Often, Downing Place’s Choir will be accompanied by Ian or Mark playing the magnificent Shigeru Kawai grand piano that resides in our church. Everyone is welcome to sing in the choir, and there are no auditions: nor is the ability to read music essential.

For each month a short introit and a longer anthem are prepared over two Sunday morning rehearsals, both at 10.15am, the second of which is then followed by a performance of the two pieces during the ensuing morning service. Attendance is entirely voluntary. All music is made available in advance and copies can be found upon the small table placed directly in front of the organ in church for anyone to take away and look at.

New singers are always welcome to come and be part of the choir at any time. Music, folder and pencil will all be provided: you just need to come and sing the right notes, preferably in the right order!

ABOUT OUR ORGAN

Our organ is a digital organ, created especially for our church by the world-renowned company, Hauptwerk. It has the facility to reproduce the sound from more than one organ. Hauptwerk are unique in that they record each pipe of an organ three times over, in order to capture every nuance of that hand-made pipe: there are no sampled sounds at all.

Hauptwerk have installed a considerable variety of organs from around Europe, in order to bring to life a panoply of music, using organs for which the composers deliberately wrote their music. Our unique organ console, which we’ve had specially built for our church, contains a number of features not found on any other instrument, greatly facilitating the playing of such a wide variety of music.

Because this is the first Hauptwerk digital organ to be permanently installed in Cambridge, and because of the centrality of the church in the city, and the live-streaming and recording facilities of our new church, Hauptwerk have very generously installed no less than three, free additional organs for us to use. So now we have eleven organs, the earliest dating from 1745, and the most recent dating from 2008. We have organs from England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.

We also thought it important to honour the previous organs that our two former churches owned. Accordingly, in honour of the organ that Henry Willis built for Emmanuel, we’ve installed the stunning ‘Willis’ organ in Hereford Cathedral, and in honour of the English, two-manual pipe organ that was built at the beginning of the 20th century for St Columba’s, we’ve installed a beautiful two-manual English church organ dating from 1907.

The first performance on the Haupwerk organ.  Mark Dawes plays for the service on 6 June 2021

Cambridge Voices

www.cambridgevoices.org

Cambridge Voices
–
One of Britain’s premier chamber choirs

Cambridge Voices was founded by Ian de Massini, former choral scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, following a meeting with the eminent 20th-century French composer, Maurice Duruflé with his wife, Marie-Madeleine Duruflé Chevalier.

 Together, they created a new chamber choir of twelve highly experienced singers based in Cambridge; former choral scholars from King’s, Trinity, St John’s, Clare, plus former members of The Monteverdi Singers and The Bach Choir.

Since the choir’s debut in Paris on August 15th 1987, they have gone on to record all of Duruflé’s unaccompanied choral music twice over for French and British recording companies, as well as Duruflé’s celebrated Requiem.

For many years, the choir has also championed the choral music of the contemporary Swiss composer, Carl Rütti, including his monumental 40-part motet, written specifically for Cambridge Voices.

 The choir has gone on to record over 14 CDs, as well as radio broadcasts for Austrian Radio ORF, and a television show for the American company PBS.

Currently the choir works as a consort of voices, rehearsing and performing without a conductor, with the founder, Ian de Massini, acting as their mentor and advisor.

Venues in which the choir has performed include St Peter’s Basilica, Rome (in the presence of The Pope), Westminster Abbey, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, Ely Cathedral, Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland, St Eustache Church and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and Propstei Sankt Gerold in Austria.

Upcoming performances:

 

Bank Holiday Lunchtime Concert at Trinity College, Cambridge

Monday 26th August, 1pm

More information can be found here.

ORIGINAL COMPOSITION

Ian de Massini’s setting of ‘Away in a Manger’ published by Stainer and Bell