Japanese Choir to join with Cookham’s Cantorum Choir in Landmark Concert.

During the course of last year Mr Masanobu Karasawa, the conductor of the Japanese choir ‘Fonte’, spent half a year in the United Kingdom researching British church music. One of the choirs which he contacted was Cookham’s Cantorum Choir and he came along to several rehearsals. He met choir members and even experienced the conviviality of the Jolly Farmer afterwards making his own contribution by teaching them all the art of origami!  They all got on so well that the idea was formed for Cantorum to join forces with Fonte the following year and perform a joint concert. Unbelievably it is all coming together for a concert which is now scheduled to take place on:

Sunday 17^th June in Holy Trinity Church, Cookham at 8 p.m.

Mr Karasawa, who has come to be known as Nobu by the choir, has been leading Fonte since the winter of 1974. Fonte was originally known as the ‘Nagareyama Citizen Chorus’ but they changed the name after their 15^th Annual concert. The word ‘Fonte’ means ‘fountain’ in Italian and they describe their reasons for choosing the name as fostering a desire to ‘keep singing many songs one after another like water in a fountain.’ Fonte is a leading choir in the city of Nagareyama and they sing in local festivals as well as playing a leading role in the culture of the area.

Fonte and Cantorum have been communicating regularly now in order to organise the whole event and it is being viewed as more of a ‘cultural exchange’ with a possibility of choir members providing ‘home stay’ for members of Fonte.  Cantorum has already had experience of this type of arrangement, as it performed joint concerts with the French ‘Ensemble Vocal de Neuilly’ in Maidenhead in 2003 and Paris in 2004. Whether Cantorum will make a trip to Japan in the future is yet to be considered!

The concert itself promises to be an exciting one. Nobu’s choir will sing in the first half, with their rendition of ‘The Soul of the Water’ for choir and piano accompaniment. This is one of the most popular pieces in Japan. It has five movements showing the life of water – rain, mud, river, towards sea and ocean. Then both Fonte and Cantorum will join forces to sing a selection of madrigals and motets. Cantorum’s performance will feature Elgar’s ‘From the Bavarian Highlands’ as well as Vaughan Williams’ ‘Shakespeare Songs’. The concert will be rounded off with a joint piece in celebratory style with either Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus or Zadok the Priest. Sally Stafford, Cantorum’s resident conductor, is carefully weighing up the programme in order to get the best possible mix for such a varied group.

This is an exciting event not only for Cantorum, but for the local area as well and the choir hopes to form links with Japanese companies locally who might be interested in sponsorship through the concert. For more information please contact the choir secretary: jill_burton@talk21.com

You can find out more about Nobu’s visit last year and see pictures at:

www.cantorumchoir.org.uk

If you want to read more about Fonte go to:

http://chorus.fonte-jp.net/index.html#introduction