Shoreham Oratorio Choir

07/05/2026

A Celebration of Musical Diversity
Join us for a musical journey through time, from Fauré and Schubert to John Rutter and Bob Dylan.
We welcome Christian Goursaud as guest conductor this term.
This concert will be held in the Shoreham Methodist Church, which is also our rehearsal venue. So it will feel familiar to us, like singing at home ;-)
Tickets £12, available from The Shoreham Gallery (shortly)
or online from WeGotTickets.com and at the door. Under 16s join us for free.
Refreshments will be served in the interval (tea and cakes).
Save the date! Saturday 11 July 2026 at 3pm.

23/03/2026

Anton Dvořák's STABAT MATER
Wow! Thrilling. Moving. Powerful. Beautiful.

Just some of the comments we received after our concert last Saturday. After losing three of the four soloists originally booked due to illness, and with two vital participants stranded at Littlehampton Station as the afternoon rehearsal started, our MD, Lucia, carried on with sang froid and conjured up an unforgettable performance from choir, soloists and players!

A huge thanks to the soloists
Naomi Kilby (soprano)
Lauren Easton (alto)
James Schouten (tenor)
Samuel Lom (bass)
and
Carolina Lopez Delnero on cello
who joined us at extremely short notice and helped save the day.

Of course, big thanks are also due to Will Emery and Rebecca Abbot (violins), and William Hammond (clarinet), not forgetting our very own Chris Duckett on piano. What a tour de force from him!

And last but not least, many, many thanks to our MD Lucia Švecová, who once again put us through our paces and encouraged us to give such a wonderful performance. She was correct when she said, Dvořák's Stabat Mater is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking pieces ever!

11/02/2026

Another date for your diaries - 21 March at 7:30pm in St Mary de Haura, Church Street, Shoreham-by-Sea.
We are singing Dvořák's Stabat Mater. The BBC wrote this about the work:
"The work stands as one of the towering monuments of choral music and was once one of the most popular works in the choral repertory."
We will be performing it with four soloists and five musicians, making this one of our most ambitious projects yet. It will be a night to remember. At only £17 a ticket, a bargain, come and join us!
Tickets are available now from https://wegottickets.com/event/688788
and will be available shortly in the Shoreham Gallery, Brunswick Road. Also available on the door.

05/12/2025

We asked our members to see if they could make the table groan with Christmas treats to be donated to the .
Well they came up trumps again. Not just one table but three.

14/11/2025

After our successful benefit concert for St Mary's last Saturday, our attention is now fully on our Christmas Concert.

This will be a great start to the Christmas Season, so why not come along and join us? There will be congregational carols, so you won’t just have to listen to us. Some great soloists and instrumentalists are also joining us, so it is shaping up to be an event not to miss.

The ticket price (£15) includes complimentary mulled wine and a mince pie after the event, under-16s are free.

Tickets are available now from WeGotTickets:
https://wegottickets.com/event/680925
And will be available shortly in the Shoreham Gallery, Brunswick Road. Also available on the door, if we don't sell out before then ;-) You think I’m joking? We did last Christmas.

03/09/2025

We are extremely happy to welcome Christopher Duckett as our new accompanist. Christopher graduated from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Frank Wibaut and Yu Chun-Yee, and received the Prokofiev Prize and the ARCM as a postgraduate.

He has since enjoyed a busy career as a soloist, accompanist and repetiteur. Concert performances include Cadogan Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Hall, Symphony Hall Birmingham and music societies around the UK. He has performed concertos by Rachmaninov, Schumann, Gershwin and Kabalevsky. Christopher has served as the accompanist for the London Orpheus Choir and the South West Essex Choir, with whom he recently performed the piano solo in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra.

Christopher teaches and coaches for City Music Services and accompanies choirs at City firms, including J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. He is currently directing performances of La Traviata from the piano for CMS in West Sussex and London, featuring professional soloists and amateur performers.
Previous productions for CMS have included Don Giovanni, also directed from the piano; The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne, Carmen at Sadler's Wells; as well as the musicals Oklahoma at Holland Park, Guys and Dolls at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and Anything Goes and Into the Woods at the Hackney Empire. He is also the accompanist for the Cor Meibon Gwalia, a Welsh Male Voice Choir based in London, with whom he performs and tours widely.

Christopher is also known for his performances of early jazz and the syncopated piano music of the 1920s and 1930s. His debut CD 'Piano Exaggerations' of music by the English composer Billy Mayerl has been featured on the 'Essential Classics' programme on BBC Radio 3.

Other forthcoming concerts include recitals in Suffolk and London with the singer Mark Glanville, with whom he recently toured in Egypt.

Christopher has been a member of Shoreham Oratorio Choir for several years and has previously served as Chair. He is delighted to become their new accompanist.

29/08/2025

We will be performing 2 concerts this term. On Armistice Weekend (8th November), our 60-strong Shoreham Oratorio Choir will sing the iconic Faure Requiem with professional soloists delivering the wonderful "Pie Jesu" and "Libera Me Domine". This is a benefit concert for the venue, St Mary De Haura, Shoreham-by-Sea. Join us for an evening of great music and help support the upkeep of St Mary's.

Tickets £15
available from The Shoreham Gallery
or online from https://wegottickets.com/event/673907
and on the door

Our traditional Christmas concert will take place at St Mary's on 13th December. Rehearsals for both events start on September 11th.

18/05/2025

Save the date for our summer concert!

An afternoon of choral music featuring Byrd, Purcell, Wesley, Parry, Elgar and our very own Tim Nail. We will also be singing a selection of madrigals by Farmer, Bennet, Gibbons, Greaves, Jones, Morley and Weelkes.

We are delighted to have Jordan Theis joining us as our guest conductor for this term.

07/05/2025

Calling all men!

We have room for more men to come along and sing with us. No audition required. We're a friendly bunch and will make you welcome.

Why not come along and give us a try? Rehearsals are on Thursday evening from 7:30pm at the Shoreham Methodist Church Hall in Brunswick Road, Shoreham.

We'd love to see you.

28/04/2025

We had another fantastic concert on April 12th in St Mary de Haura. We were singing with a small chamber ensemble, and the organ accompanying us for Gounod's St Cecilia Mass. It makes such a difference to perform these kinds of pieces with an ensemble, even if just chamber. The soloists, Rose, Quito and Dominic, were amazing and made the whole performance such a treat. Our MD, Lucia, even told us that we sounded like a big operatic chorus!
So here is your chance to enjoy this beautiful music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btoL3bZK8GY
Of course, to really get the full experience, you really have to have been there in person. So why not come along to our next concert?

12th April 2025, St Mary de Haura church, Shoreham-by-SeaShoreham Oratorio Choir presents its Easter Concert, featuring Schubert's Mass in G Major and Gounod...