Romsey Choral Society

Welcome to Romsey Choral Society!

News -

Our March concert in the church of St.Cross in Winchester was a celebration of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and was well received by our appreciative audience.. In October 2022 it was the 150 anniversary of the composer’s birth so it seemed appropriate to celebrate some of his best known and loved choral music.

Coming soon - we are delighted to open the Romsey Festival again with a concert in Romsey Abbey:

For our summer concert this year on July 1st in Romsey Abbey we shall be singing Dame Ethel Smyth’s ‘Mass in D’ which was composed in 1891. We will be accompanied by the City of Southampton Orchestra, who will also be performing Beethoven’s 8th Symphony.
Ethel Smyth was undoubtedly the most well-known female British composer of her generation but is perhaps less well known today.
The ‘Mass in D’ is a powerful composition following the tradition of the conventional mass and is heavily influenced by Brahms’s ‘German Requiem’ and Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’.

Come and hear our performance and acquaint yourselves with this rousing work by a feisty Victorian lady
who was a composer, a suffragette and more!

For full details of our next concert on 1st July 2023, including how to buy tickets, please click on the "Next concert" page.

Romsey Choral Society

Welcome to Romsey Choral Society which is recognised as one of the best choirs in Southern England. Please have a look around this site to discover more about the choir. The full season's repertoire is listed in the "Concerts" page.

Rehearsals usually take place every Tuesday at 7.30pm at the Romsey Methodist Church, The Hundred, Romsey, SO51 8BZ .

We have now resumed rehearsals in the Romsey Methodist church and the covid restrictions have been significantly relaxed. However we remain completely committed to keeping all our members as safe as possible and request that all members follow these simple steps:

If you are unwell at all, please stay safely at home.
If you have been "pinged" or traced as a covid contact, please stay safely at home.
Please use face coverings if you feel more comfortable and we will continue to offer hand sanitiser as before.

The Committee continue to keep abreast of any guidance and are following all the steps required by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport together with risk management based on the Making Music templates.

Over the past 2 years we have taken the required steps for any face to face rehearsals and for a concert performance without any adverse incidents.

Thank you to all the members who have followed instructions, been careful and kept us all safe.

Passionate about choral singing?
Then get in touch to discuss adding your voice to ours! Click the button to find out more.

Join Us

Want to hear us sing?

Click below to see and hear a short YouTube excerpt from Visions of Heaven - Saturday 28th March 2015

Hear an excerpt

Summer 2020 recording

Christmas 2020 recording

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Richard Pearce
RCS Musical Director

Richard Pearce has been Musical Director of Romsey Choral Society since 2019, and since then has enjoyed leading the choir in performances of works including Handel’s Messiah, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Schubert’s Mass in G, working with the City of Southampton Orchestra and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and with our regular organist, Richard McVeigh.
He was organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating with first class honours in music, he studied piano accompaniment for two years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he developed his work with solo singers.
He is now a professor at the GSMD, coaching singers and instrumentalists for careers in opera and the concert platform, and is a trustee of the Josephine Baker Trust, which supports young soloists at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London.
Richard is busy as a conductor, pianist and organist with professional choirs. He records and broadcasts regularly with the BBC Singers, and particularly enjoys the challenge of preparing an extremely wide variety of repertoire, including contemporary and new music.
As organist and pianist he has performed with many of the UK’s best-known choral conductors, including David Hill, Stephen Cleobury, Paul Spicer, Bob Chilcott and Sofi Jeannin.
Richard has a long-standing association with the Royal Choral Society, and performs with them many times each year at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In addition he makes twice-yearly trips to Sweden to work with groups in the Stockholm and Malmö areas.
Richard is also Musical Director of the Waverley Singers, based in Farnham, Surrey.
Particular highlights with them have been concerts in Guildford Cathedral of Monteverdi Vespers, Verdi Requiem, Beethoven Mass in C, Brahms Schicksalslied, Mozart Requiem and Bach Magnificat in D. He has also introduced new and varied repertoire to the choir,
including commissions by composer Will Todd, and many newly-written compositions.
Richard is regular organist with the Philharmonia and BBC Symphony Orchestras in London; with them he has performed with many inspirational conductors including established maestri Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez, Oliver Knussen, Andrew Davis, Sakari Oramo, Marin Alsop and Ed Gardner, as well as up-and-coming stars such as Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Valentina Peleggi. Recent performances have included the solo organ part in the European première of Unsuk Chin’s Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles with Esa-Pekka Salonen in London’s Royal Festival Hall, and a tour of China performing Saint-Säens organ symphony with Vladimir Ashkenazy. He also performs regularly in Promenade concerts and recordings, including at the Last Night of the Proms, to a worldwide television audience.
Richard frequently conducts and plays for services at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster and at the Houses of Parliament.

We are singing again and we'd love you to join us!

It's nearly back to normal after the covid pandemic, which meant a whole host of safety measures, and we are singing again.

We have now been able to sing together in our usual lovely venues - Romsey Abbey, Chandlers Ford Methodist Church and the church at St Cross, Winchester - and the music responds to the venue.

If you have been inspired to sing and would like to give us a try - go to the "Join us" tab at the top of the page and let us know. The membership e-mail address goes through to Sarah Andrews, the first point of contact for new members, who will be in touch to tell you a bit more about the choir.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Hilary Mitchell
RCS Admin Secretary