Japanese Women’s Choir and Soloists to perform at St Margaret’s Church, Aberlour

Aberlour in snow

The final event of the summer concert series, sponsored by the Friends of St Margaret’s Church, Aberlour, will take place at 7.30 pm on Saturday 6 September 2008, and will feature the Green Chorus, a group of Japanese women living in London who have sung together for the past twenty years.  The concert at St Margaret’s Church will be a celebration of their anniversary.  They have chosen to come to St Margaret’s through the friendship of the group’s musical director, Mikoko Ridd and her husband Mike with Angus and Lynette Findlay of Muirton, Craigellachie. 

The Friends of St Margaret’s are delighted that the Japanese group has offered to come to sing in the church to help raise much-needed funds.  The successful summer series of concert has brought many people to the church, often for the first time, to admire its remarkable interior.

The Green Chorus, which meets regularly to sing not only traditional songs from Japan, but also a repertoire of English and other European music, has been a way for a group of Japanese women, wives of busy executives in London, to meet socially and to maintain a central link with their cultural traditions.  Japanese music reflects so much the changing seasons of the countryside and the programme chosen by the group will feature traditional songs, as well as drawing on their very wide repertoire of Western music.

The first half of the programme will include madrigals by Thomas Morley and William Byrd, as well as popular songs such as London Bridge and Danny Boy, in addition to some of the beautiful Japanese folksongs.  The second half of the programme will feature Mikiko Ridd, soprano, accompanied by Noriko Sekiya on the piano, who will also accompany her daughter Haru Sekiya on the violin, in a wide-ranging programme of music by Gabriel Faure, Benjamin Britten, Eugene Ysaye, Antonin Dvorak, as well as Japanese music.

Mikiko Ridd, who is the Director of the Green Chorus, was trained as a singer at the Kojoshima College of Music, and was very active in Japan before moving to London in 2000.  She became a soprano member of the London Symphony Chorus and has sung with them not only in London but also in New York, Italy, Germany and France.

Noriko Sekiya was trained at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo and later in Munich, before returning to Japan to teach at Tokai University.  She now works as the General Manager of the Japan Overseas Performance Association.  Her daughter Haru Sekiya started playing the violin at the age of six and graduated with honours in 2003 from the Royal Academy of Music.  She now performs and undertakes educational activities in music all over the United Kingdom.

The programme will be a colourful and unusual conclusion to the concert series of St Margaret’s Church, and tickets priced £6 (children under 16 free) may be obtained from Angus Findlay (tel: 01340 881208; e-mail: angus.Findlay@notionmore.co.uk) or at the door.  The concert will conclude with a short wine reception to enable the audience to meet the members of the Green Chorus, who will have come from London specially for this event.