Join the Gemini Consort on Saturday, 30 November, for A Winter Offering at St Peter’s in Petersfield, supporting The Rosemary Foundation. Led by director Lucy Humphris, this intimate concert weaves lullabies, seasonal carols, and works by Poulenc, Monteverdi, and more. Celebrating the legacy of founder Ann Pinhey, the Consort keeps her vision alive, balancing cherished classics with unique, modern compositions for SSA voices. Enjoy a rich choral sound, perfect for these winter months, and experience an ensemble committed to blending tradition with fresh musical discoveries.
On Saturday 30 November the Gemini Consort presents A winter offering at St Peter’s, Petersfield, with a collection for The Rosemary Foundation. It will be offering up a wide range of music, from traditional Wassail songs to works by Poulenc, MacMillan and Monteverdi. From lullabies to early seasonal carols, this is music for those encroaching winter months.
Its director, Lucy Humphris, talks about the concert and the Gemini Consort with Simon O’Hea.
Lucy
Our next concert is at the end of November, so it’s not quite Christmas yet. So we we’ve got some Christmassy things in there, but we’ve also a lot of sort of lullaby-based music as well as some more folksy music: it’s about the turning of the seasons, the year dying away with Christmassy bits sprinkled in.
I’ve played and sung in so many churches and Saint Peter’s is still way up there. It’s not too reverberant and helps us produce a rich and warm sound.
Simon
Give me a sense about the choir’s history and development.
Lucy
The group was founded and run by Ann Pinhey, who sadly passed away last year. She said to me, “Here’s the choir. Please take it on and do something with it.” I was very flattered, but also we all very much wanted to carry on singing. So that’s what we’ve done.
Ann did everything herself, because she could. She had the time, and she had so much music, which I now have, in lots and lots of box files.
While very much staying with the ethos of wanting to have interesting programmes, we are trying to take the group into a new era while building on what we already have got. We’ve got some got all sorts of plans for concerts with music by composers as widely ranging as from Monteverdi to Maxwell Davies. We’re very much trying to stick with what she wanted for the choir, which was very much about introducing people to new music, but at the same time, having some crowd pleasers in there too.
We’ve got a lot of seasoned choristers. A lot of people sing in other choirs. I am the only professional musician in the group.
It’s been lovely taking charge of a group in which we’re all working together towards a common goal. Everybody’s there because they want to be there. Because I sang with the choir for so long, I know what kind of music we all like.
Ann founded lots of different choirs, including the Petersfield Chamber Choir, which was the first of her groups that I sang with back in 2014. That was a full SATB choir. Gemini originally started as a smaller iteration of the PCC.
It soon afterwards became a female voice choir. It’s nice to be part of a SSA choir with the additional challenge of finding stuff that’s written for SSA. Also, our group produces such a specific sound and it’s really nice to explore that.
Simon
Can you tell me a bit more about some of the favourite choral music that you’ve done with the choir?
Lucy
We did Stars by Ēriks Ešenvalds, which is gorgeous, at our concert last Christmas, and it was quite emotional because obviously Ann had just passed away.
I am a massive Maxwell Davies fan. We did some of his Seven Songs Home at our last summer concert: these are very tricky but also are so effective.
We’ve fallen in love with both Cecilia McDowell and Sarah Quartel as composers. A lot of the music they write is for SSA choirs. They’re nice and accessible for an audience, but also there’s a bit more “crunch” in the harmony. I’m a sucker for crunchy harmonies, as I’m sure my singers all aware at this point! That usually involves some form of dissonance. Often with a lot of the more accessible music you have a nice resolution at the end, but I do like a bit of a bit of cluster chords going on.
Simon
Tell me more about what’s special about the choir.
Lucy
We’ve had a stable and capable membership, so we’ve not had to audition, and we don’t want to become too big. There are 12 singers at the moment, which works out quite nicely because we got six altos and six sopranos. If we were to expand too much then we’d have a sound that doesn’t necessarily feel quite right for an SSA choir.
I think that with an SATB choir you need the volume of people to have a nice big cohesive sound, otherwise you are going to get certain voices sticking out. But when you’ve got much a narrower range of pitch – you obviously can only go so low and so high with female voices – there’s a lot less scope for certain voices to stick out. So, having a smaller group works really quite nicely because you can still hear all the words. There’s a nice blend, but it doesn’t sound too big. It doesn’t sound like it’s a soprano and alto section of a bigger choir. It sounds more chamber music, which I much prefer.
