A non-audition choir, with a membership of around 100 singers, Ember Choral Society is based in Thames Ditton, Surrey and held a special celebration in June this year to mark 50 years of music-making. Today, the members, whose ages range from teens upwards, come from all over the Borough of Elmbridge, as well as from further afield. The Society is affiliated to the National Federation of Music Societies (NFMS), to the Arts Councils of Kingston and Elmbridge and is also supported by the R.C. Sherriff Trust. During each season, from early September to mid June, the Society performs two major concerts, usually in December and May, and also, by invitation, gives other smaller scale performances and charity concerts. The choir’s Musical Director and inspirational force is John Sutton, under whose expert tuition rehearsals are as relaxed, positive and good humoured as they are musical. Visit the Chairman’s Report 2007-8 and the Musical Director’s report 2007-8 for further details about the choir’s recent activities.
The Society always welcomes new members in all voices – remember, there are no auditions! – and is currently particularly keen to recruit altos and basses. For details of how to join, visit our
Membership Information page.
The Society performs works from the mainstream choral repertoire as well as less well-known works and, to mark the Millennium, commissioned and performed the U.K. première of A Surrey Cantata, by a formerly local composer, Barrie Guard, with whom the Society still maintains close contact. For details of the Society’s future concert programme visit our
Future Programme page and our Next Concert page.
Throughout each season the Society enjoys a lively and popular programme of social and fund-raising events, which are always well supported by the members, their families and friends and the many friends of the Society. For details of these events visit our
Calendar of Events page.
The Society, closely associated with the Hampton Choral Society, occasionally gives joint concerts with them. The most recent collaboration was in the summer of 2007 for a widely acclaimed performance to a capacity audience of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. The previous joint concert was a performance of the less well known but, nevertheless, wonderfully atmospheric A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams. The Society regularly goes on tours organised by H E Musical Services Ltd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ember and Hampton Choral Societies) and has been as far north as Kelso and as far south as Foix near the Pyrenees in France, and has made one memorable visit to Prague. Particularly popular are the summer concert tours to the principal wine regions of France.