The Sixteen choir, celebrating it’s 40th anniverary this year
IT isn’t often that The Sixteen, one of the world’s truly great professional choirs, rolls into London: it’s perpetually on tour elsewhere. But with director Harry Christophers, it will be here for a very special concert on Friday August 23, at St Leonard’s Church Shoreditch, the atmospherically distressed church known to many as the all too urban setting for the TV series Rev.
The concert happens there because St Leonard’s is the burial place of Richard Burbage, the leading Shakespearian actor who died in 1619. And the programme celebrates this 400th anniversary with readings and music from Burbage’s time – the music straddling the Tudor/Jacobean eras in works by Byrd, Morley, Gibbons and their like.
As a combination of place, programme and purpose you could ask no more. And The Sixteen never disappoint. In this kind of repertoire they’re as good as it gets, so take note.
• 7.30pm, £5-£65, Friday 23rd, St Leonards C of E Church, Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JN (close to Hoxton Overground), https://thesixteen.com/events/the-choicest-music-of-the-kingdom-london/
