Music at St Oswald's

21/06/2026

Our final Choral Evensong of this academic year will take place this evening; it's chock-full of wonderful music, of course, and will also be an excellent opportunity to say thank you to our Music Scholars and other students who have sung with us over the course of the year for all their hard work and dedication as we come to the end of term. Do join us!

13/06/2026

June 2026

13/06/2026

This Sunday, in addition to being the Second Sunday after Trinity, is also designated by the Royal School of Church Music as 'Music Sunday' - an opportunity to celebrate the work, dedication, and talents of all those associated with church music, and to give thanks for its place in our worshipping lives. Many of the psalms encourage us to sing and praise God with our music, including Psalm 100 - the psalm set for the day - and Psalm 81, from which is drawn the text of our anthem this week.

23/05/2026

This Sunday is the feast of Pentecost - AKA the church's birthday! With the sending of the Holy Spirit on Jesus' followers, fifty days after His resurrection, they were finally equipped to spread the Gospel message to all people. Our anthems for both the Parish Eucharist and Choral Evensong this week both invoke the Holy Spirit, asking for inspiration and wisdom to continue the church's work today.

16/05/2026

We marked Ascension Day on Thursday - relocated to St Oswald's due to the weather from our usual setting of Finchale Priory, which we hope to return to next year. We now wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus as he returned to his Father, which we'll mark next Sunday with Pentecost; in the meantime, we continue our celebration of the Ascension with some wonderful Mendelssohn this Sunday, plus voluntaries by Mathias and Grieg.

09/05/2026

08/05/2026

Our first service of Choral Evensong for this term will be held this Sunday, and it promises to be a cracker - Parry's 'My soul, there is a country' (the first of his Songs of Farewell) is an absolute gem, and will be sung alongside gorgeous liturgical settings by Dyson and Joanna Forbes L'Estrange. We also have Tallis' ever-beloved setting of words from John's gospel at the morning Eucharist.

02/05/2026

We were delighted to welcome our students back to choir practice on Thursday evening this week, and incredibly thankful to them for giving their time and energy to our music-making during the very busy exam season! We hope you'll be able to join us for our services this term - there's some wonderful repertoire coming up. Stay tuned!

25/04/2026

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is sometimes known as 'Good Shepherd Sunday'; the Gospel reading is from John 10, in which Jesus describes himself as a shepherd who knows his sheep by name and is willing to lay down his life for them. We sing as the anthem a paraphrase of Psalm 23, set by James Leith Macbeth Bain (Brother James) - "The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want".

We're also delighted to be giving thanks at the Parish Eucharist for the birth of Mary Grace Henderson, granddaughter to our churchwarden, Andy.

18/04/2026

There's been a bit of a break in our posting due to some technical issues, but we're now back just in time for our choir to return to singing following a well-earned post-Easter break. Tomorrow, as we hear the story of Jesus meeting two of his disciples on the road Emmaus and breaking bread with them, we sing Margaret Rizza's setting of a poem by David Adam, invoking God's presence as we share the Eucharist together.

There's no evening service at St Oswald's tomorrow, as elsewhere in our benefice we'll be holding a Civic Service at St Helen's, Kelloe, at 4pm, including the Right Worshipful the Mayor of Durham, Cllr Gary Hutchinson.