Jubilate! Choir

Christmas by Candlelight A delicious and perfectly formed short concert of seasonally themed choral works, mostly sung by the wonderful Jubilate! Choir. Keble College Chapel, in all its vastness and gloriousness, looked particularly lovely lit only by hundreds of tea-lights, flickering and wavering in the winter gloom. The concert followed a more traditional format this year, with readings from the Bible (not all New Testament, which was nice, although the old Biblical parataxis recalled unfortunate echoes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and opened with the Jubilate choir singing a new piece, The Light of the World by Simon Whalley, actually in the chapel where Keble’s copy of that celebrated painting hangs; a slightly muted but beautiful beginning.

With William Harris’s anthem "Strengthen ye the weak hands" the choir emerged into the main chapel before the altar, and began to use the magical instrument that is the entire building as it should be used - exquisite harmonies building from subtle precision to awesome, full –throated climax, which filled the vast spaces of the roof and continued to roll through the air for a full two or three second after the singers had shut their mouths.  

The first part of the programme was a very much German, with works by Bach, Brahms and Praetorius, glorious chorales alternating with organ preludes on Keble’s wonderfully mellow new organ. The singing was as miraculously precise as we have come to expect from this excellent choir, and it was fascinating to watch Simon Whalley conducting rather as if he were cooking, appearing to fold the voices into the air with his hands. Particularly with the soprano-only Blessed Virgin’s cradle Song by Edward Bairstow, the sound is so divinely beautiful that it literally does make your hair stand on end; an angelic resonance.  

There was no interval this year, so the whole concert seemed much shorter and we barely had time to feel hungry before we were out in the icy crystalline air, dazed by an hour and twenty minutes of exquisite beauty rolling around the vault of your skull in memory as it just had the vault of the chapel roof. 

The final piece, Holst’s version of the beautiful medieval carol "This have I done for my true love", was simply magical, evoking ancient folk music, the Song of Songs, the midwinter festivals as well as the Christian celebrations of many years ago in an almost atavistic way. It had that numinous sense of imminence – wonderful truths that are just beyond your perceptions and made you want to howl like a wolf. 

This is a one-off concert before Christmas, but the choir does perform regularly in Oxford– March 17th is the next one. Definitely worth leaving your cosy fireside for. 

Andrea Hopkins (DI Reviewer), 13/12/11

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Jubilate!’s Saturday night performance was a powerful pleasure to experience; lifting the spirit despite the rather solemn content of the first half.

Set in the glorious Keble Collage Chapel, Jubilate! started off the evening with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of Purcell’s ‘Hear my Prayer, O Lord O God, the King in Glory’. As the combined voices lifted into the first peak the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and the tone was well set for the evening.

Jubilate!, true to their consistently high standards, produced music with all the characteristics of a great coffee: The sound was full, rich and robust, with the different pitches blended smoothly together. Director Simon Whalley brought the twenty five voices together seamlessly so that they flowed one into the other, creating that resounding wall of sound that is the hallmark of high-class chamber choirs.

And if the music was the finest of coffees, surely Keble College’s Chapel was the most splendid mug to serve it in (okay, I will drop the analogy now) (Jubi-Latté ? - Ed). Quite apart from the aesthetics being spot on for the music, the acoustics were fantastic. As crescendos fell silent they were followed by that lovely extended echo, which I think lends so much to the music’s air of grandeur.

The choir was accompanied by pieces from a brass ensemble and organ, played by the incredibly skilful Clive Driskill-Smith. Though the brass pieces were nothing to write home about, the organ certainly was. The pieces played were Toccata Settima and Danse Macabre; two very strange choices indeed. Though both were undoubtedly complex pieces showcasing Clive Driskill-Smith’s considerable talents, they seemed slightly at odds with tone of the evening. Toccata Settima was slightly chaotic, and Danse Macabre felt very much like a macabre fairground. Very strange indeed. Also, after the full force of the choir, the solo organ pieces, let alone the brass ensemble, seemed a little light. But then, what wouldn’t after the choir?

All in all Jubilate! produced what I expected them to; a high calibre choral rendition that ticked all the boxes with spirit and gusto. If chamber choir is your cup of tea, then Jubilate! is certainly your cup of coffee. Good stuff!

Matty Czaczkes (DI Reviewer), 23/03/09

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