Sinfonia Chorale is 60 years old! No, we can’t believe it either but, dear friends, 2026 is our special birthday year and we have some exciting events planned, which we would love to share with you!
Save the date – Saturday March 21st, 2026, 6pm doors open, 6.30pm concert. This will take place at St Jude’s Church Hall, Mapperley, Nottingham, NG3 5HE.
We are going to have an evening of feasting and entertainment! Following the performance at 6.30pm, we will all enjoy a delicious, hot banquet, professionally catered by Sadlergates Catering, where we can all sit together, eat, chat and relax, enjoying a party ambience and celebrating our years as a choir.
Advance booking (before noon on Friday March 6th) is essential for this event, so please visit our website to secure your place and order your choice of food. There will be chicken, pork and vegetarian options. It is also possible to contact Sandra Wakefield on 0115 9606236, if you have any special dietary requirements. We will welcome everyone with a Prosecco/Nosecco celebratory drink and there will be free tea and coffee. You are invited to ‘bring your own bottle’ to enjoy with your meal! Tickets are only £25.00 per person.
The entertainment for the evening will be Adriano Banchieri’s Festino nella sera del giovedi grasso avanti cena (1608), which translates as ‘Small party before dinner on the evening of Fat Thursday’. This was the last Thursday before Lent. Banchieri (1568-1634), who actually became a Benedictine monk in 1589, was an Italian composer, organist and poet, as well as a founder of the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. He was also a music theorist and a master at composing madrigal comedies, which were in fashion just before the rise of opera.
Festino is one such example of a series of madrigals (sung in Italian but full translations will be provided!) which paint colourful pictures of larger than life characters (such as the little old men of Chioggia), ordinary village folk (spindle-sellers, maidens and Aunt Bernadina) and animals (dogs, cats, owls and even a magpie). Banchieri wanted to be more modern, creating more dramatic pieces which told a story when sung in succession.
This will be a fun evening of celebration, so please book your tickets and join us! As Banchieri declares in the opening lines of Festino: ‘Chi brama avere spasso e piacere, per un tantino entri al festino’, which, for those of us not fluent in Italian, means ‘Whoever longs for fun and pleasure, come into the party for a little while’. How could you resist?!
We look forward to seeing you, and we thank you so much for your continued support.
Best wishes,
Sinfonia Chorale
