Emily Renshaw-Kidd awarded a Canterbury Christ Church University Alumni Community Hero Award

We are delighted that our CCT Artistic Director Emily Renshaw-Kidd has been recognised and awarded a Canterbury Christ Church University Alumni Community Hero Award. I was very pleased to see her hard work, enthusiasm and perseverance for both the Trust and music education recognised by her alma mater . The Trust is so very lucky to have her at our helm as artistic director.

Responding to the award Emily said:

“I was lucky enough to choose Canterbury Christ Church for my music degree, with a department led by the inspirational Grenville Hancox and a wealth of renowned, talented and dedicated music staff. I’m also lucky enough to make music every day with incredible people of all ages.
I couldn’t have achieved this without the most inspirational and dedicated teachers who started me off on my musical journey and continued to nurture and develop my knowledge and skills as I grew.

That’s what led me into my own career as a teacher and the wonderful Vanessa Young who guided and supported me through my PGCE is here tonight; thank you Vanessa. I have felt for the last 20 years that it is my responsibility to pass on this baton - we always use the analogy at the Langton of standing on the shoulders of giants and I truly hope that I can be some small part of encouraging these talented and very intelligent young people to go on and do much better things than me whilst also continuing to inspire the next generation.

We also want to ensure that our leaders of tomorrow, understand the power of music on all aspects of our lives. Our medical professionals, researchers, therapists and politicians of the future need to witness the benefits of music on physical and mental well being, specifically for us at the Langton and Canterbury Cantata Trust discovering and celebrating the ways in which singing can help relieve the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Not only do our young people get to be part of this on a regular basis but they gain an important lesson in empathy and altruism, they gain pearls of wisdom from our older generation, whilst bridging a generational gap and finding common ground.

Music is all about caring - when we sing together we are caring for each other and I don’t think there is anything more innate or powerful than that.

My plea to anyone here in education, especially at a leadership level, is that you continue to give music and the creative Arts the importance they deserve, for if education is the beating heart of humanity, surely music is the soul.”

An Interview with Emily

We are delighted to share the super interview with Emily by CCCU on winning her recent award, where she talks about her delight in continuing the work of Grenville Hancox in the Trust and the vital relationship between CCT and the Langton.

Read the full interview here.

Canterbury Cantata presenta un po'di Musica Italiana

Our next Trust event is the upcoming Cantata choir concert at the Colyer-Fergusson hall, which promises to be a super celebration of Puccini and Verdi and other Italian composers.

Greg Tassell and Orlando Barton Hodges will be joining Cantata choir to perform the Puccini Messa di Gloria and also some wonderful solo Italian operatic arias. There is also a short Bellini aria sung by Joseph Morris who sang in our concert featuring the Goodall 'Eternal LIght'.

Stelios Chatziiofidis will lead a superb group for our orchestra and the excellent pianist, Helen Crayford, will accompany the arias, so it will be a talent-filled afternoon!

Transport yourselves to Italy with this wonderful romantic programme.

Students and children are free and tickets are available via the Gulbenkian box office.

June 29th at 3PM

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There will also be a retiring collection in support of the Parkinsons Centre for Integrated Therapies.

A Nearly Midsummer Concert

Amici Chorus sings to Friends
Music by Weelkes, Fauré, Finzi, Stanford and Misa Criolla by Argentinian composer Ariel Ramirez

Wednesday, 4th June at 7.30pm
St Pauls Church, Church Street St Pauls, Canterbury, CT11 INH

Tickets £10 in advance or on the door

Greg Tassell, tenor. Krish Parthiban, tenor. Christopher Gower, piano. Roan Kearsey Lawson, percussion. Grenville Hancox, director.

Canterbury Cantata and all that Jazz

“All that Jazz”, the next concert featuring Canterbury Cantata Choir and a superb jazz ensemble of talented local musicians, will be a slight departure from our more familiar classical repertoire.

Canterbury Cantata Choir is led by Emily Renshaw-Kidd, the artistic director of Canterbury Cantata Trust which through its ‘Sing to Beat’ and ‘Monday Music’ activities with local branches in Canterbury and Folkestone, is demonstrating the power of singing to improve wellbeing and has now sown the seeds for 35 ‘Sing to Beat’ groups around the country.

The ensemble will get your feet tapping with the jazzy rhythms and harmonies of A Little Jazz Mass and Mass in Blue, together with classic American songs and a choral version of Bernstein’s popular West Side Story.

Bob Chilcott, once a member of the King’s Singers, composed A Little Jazz Mass in 2004, a highly original and effective concert setting of the Latin Missa brevis in which the various movements embrace a variety of jazz styles.

Will Todd, born in 1970, is much in demand with award-winning choirs. His music is valued for its melodic intensity and harmonic skill, often incorporating jazz colours, and his choral music is much in demand from amateur as well as professional performers. He is best-known for his choral works, and his jazz-inspired Mass in Blue has been performed hundreds of times since its premiere in 2003.

Anna Gregg, the soprano soloist for this exciting work is the ‘Northern Ireland Opera Young Opera Voice of 2023’. Anna graduated in 2022 with distinction, from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Helen Crayford, the choir’s talented repetiteur, won a French Government scholarship to study privately with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and was the principal keyboard player with the Britten Sinfonia. Her spectacular virtuoso one-woman show, Rags to Riches, featuring the music of ragtime, has taken her to the Edinburgh Festival, Italy and New York.

Jerome Davies and Simon Whiting join Peter Cook, local saxophonist and educator for Deal Music and Arts, to complete the line-up for this exciting concert featuring such great local talent.

SATURDAY MARCH 1st 7PM at St Peter’s Methodist Church, Canterbury. Tickets also on the door, but book online to secure your place.

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