The St John's Smith Square Christmas Festival returns for its 38th year.

 

2 December 2023, 19.30, £10.00-£30.00
Libera in Concert

Join the boys of Libera with orchestra for an inspirational performance, with sublime harmonies and celestial sounds, of seasonal arrangements and tracks from their 2023 release, Forever.

 

3 December 2023, 19.00, £16.00-£20.00
Royal Orchestral Society

The Royal Orchestral Society are pleased to present a beautiful and varied selection of rhapsodic music from America, with a mixture of familiar favourites and lesser-known gems. Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, probably his most famous work, was written in 1942, in response to the US’s entry into World War II. Joan Tower modelled her ‘Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman’ on Copland’s inspired work, and dedicates it to ‘honour women who take risks and are adventurous’. Gershwin’s quintessentially American symphonic poem, American in Paris, is a well-loved vibrant and radiant ‘joie de vivre’, Barber’s Adagio for Strings is probably his best known work, but his compact yet profound Essay no. 1 for Orchestra, written in the same year for the same concert, is a wonderful masterpiece. Copland’s ballet ‘Rodeo’ is a celebration of the ‘Wild West’. It features American folk songs, dance tunes. This performance will feature a specially-inserted and rarely-performed movement as a special surprise for our audience!

 

4 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£30.00
Corinthian Orchestra - Wagner & Mahler

The Corinthian Orchestra returns to St John's Smith Square for another spectacular programme, this time, taking on the themes of love and death. The Prelude and Liebestod (love-death) stands at the beginning and end of Wagner’s sensual Tristan und Isolde, an opera focusing on desire, illicit love and the fatal, inextricable combination of love and death.

 

5 December 2023, 19.30, £12.00-£25.00
Cardinal Vaughan Schola Cantorum

The Cardinal Vaughan School’s acclaimed Schola Cantorum returns to St John’s Smith Square for their popular annual performance of Handel’s ever-popular Messiah alongside period instrument ensemble St James’ Baroque. The boys of the choir step forward to sing the solos in what has become an eagerly anticiapted Christmas event.

 

6 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£30.00
The Parliament Choir

Start off your Festive Season with the Parliament Choir's ever popular Westminster Christmas. Featuring Christmas music old and new, well known and less familiar and readings from some famous Westminster faces, our festive concert promises to get you in the mood for Christmas.

 

8 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£36.00
Southbank Sinfonia & London Concert Choir

With a ghostly opening, Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony, a work of musical rawness, starts this concert of sublime works. Following on, Schubert’s ‘Magnificat’ – a hymn expressing joy and thanksgiving – is the perfect upbeat to a trio of works by Mendelssohn, including his unfinished oratorio, ‘Christus’.

9-10 December 2023, 11.00, 14.00 (9, 10), 16.00
£15.00-£32.00
Southbank Sinfonia - The Snowman

Experience the enchantment and wonder of the timeless classic, The Snowman, like never before. With Southbank Sinfonia performing a live soundtrack to the film being shown on the big screen, this captivating performance will leave the whole family spellbound.

 

9 December 2023, 19.30, £10.00-£30.00
The Christmas Story

Following the success of the award-winning recording of Gabriel Jackson's The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the same team collaborate once again to premiere Jackson's The Christmas Story. Set to a libretto devised by Simon Jones, Chaplain of Merton, and including Merton poets, Jackson brings together Merton College Choir, the College's Girl Choristers and a ten-part instrumental ensemble for this vivid setting of the Christmas story.

 

12 December 2023, 19.30, £18.00-£35.00
The Gesualdo Six - There is no Rose

For centuries Christmas and the surrounding seasons have inspired composers to new heights of invention. This programme reaches across the ages, from the eternal beauty of the Tudor church right up to the twenty-first century, with each piece chosen to evoke a sense of mystery and joy.

 

13 December 2023, 19.30, £10.00-£30.00
A Baroque Hanukkah

Vache Baroque singers and the award-winning ensemble La Vaghezza unite to celebrate the Hanukkah story and mark 400 years of Salomone Rossi's groundbreaking publication 'The Songs of Solomon'.

 

14 December 2023, 13.05, £10.00
Samuel Ali - Organ

Completed in 1935, Messiaen's monumental La Nativité du Seigneur comprises nine meditations on scenes from the Christmas story. It is a work that is all at once beautiful, strange, and intensely moving - a kaleidoscope of colour and feeling. It is performed at Christmas the world over, perhaps because it contains that hallmark of great music: tension and release. A work for the ages, Messiaen composed La Nativité through the lens of his own vivid synaesthesia, blending western classical idioms with Indian and Greek rhythmic ideas, plainsong, Hindu ragas, birdsong, traditional keyboard forms, and an unwavering Catholic faith.

 

14 December 2023, 21.30, £15.00
Jazz in the Crypt

Jazz up the night with some smooth tunes and good vibes! Join us for a relaxed evening of jazz favourites in the atmospheric crypt of St John’s Smith Square.

 

15 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£35.00
A Babe is Born

Join New College Choir for a seasonal celebration encompassing traditional and contemporary music from around Europe, with a focus on early English and German Christmas music. The music ranges from the intimate to the grandiose, from quiet reflection to boisterous merriment—presented with New College Choir’s trademark verve and style.

 

16 December 2023, 19.00, £15.00-£35.00
National Youth Theatre Music

A seasonal selection of readings, music and staged extracts. Established in 1976, the National Youth Music Theatre's productions - including some 50 new commissions - have been seen throughout the UK and abroad, winning numerous accolades and awards. Over forty-six years the NYMT has had a huge cast and many have gone on to enrich the professional stage. Alumni include Jude Law, Sheridan Smith, Matt Lucas, Kerry Ellis, Eddie Redmayne and Idris Elba.

 

17 December 2023, 19.00, £10.00-£30.00
Jazzical Christmas Extravaganza

The programme will contain including well-loved seasonal pieces by Bach, Mozart, and Gershwin, jazz arrangements of Christmas favourites, and many more.

 

18 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£45.00
A Christmas Concert from The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge and conductor Graham Ross return to St John’s Smith Square for their annual performance at the Christmas Festival, performing a magnificent festive programme that stretches from the richness of Renaissance polyphony by Praetorius, Morales, and Mouton to masterpieces by Howells, Iain Farrington and Will Todd.

 

19 December 2023, 19.30, £15.00-£45.00
A Christmas Gloria

London Choral Sinfonia’s muchl-loved annual Christmas concert features a mix of favourite Christmas works in traditional and contemporary arrangements. John Rutter's uplifting and joyful 'Gloria' takes centre-stage at this year's concert, alongside the winner of this year’s LCS Christmas Carol competition.

 

20 December 2023, 19.30, £10.00-£30.00
Christmas with Christ Church

The Choristers and Clerks of Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford, directed by Steven Grahl, perform a selection of Christmas music to celebrate the festive season. The programme will include some familiar favourites and a range of works from the 16th century to the present day.

 

21 December 2023, 13.05, £10.00
Ibex Brass

Ibex Brass is an award-winning new ensemble, formed in late 2017 by ten undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Royal Academy of Music. The group’s main aim is to expand the music for brass dectet well beyond that which already exists, and its repertoire centres around new, bespoke arrangements of canonical piano- and orchestral- works. Ibex Brass prides itself on its ability to give these well-known classics a new brassy sheen, and to encourage listeners to experience familiar repertoire in a new way.

 

21 December 2023, 19.30, £25.00-£45.00
The Tallis Scholars: Celebrating 50 Years

This programme takes a slightly different look from usual at the Christmas story, viewing it from the point of view of the shepherds who came to worship at the crib. Unsurprisingly there is a wealth of great music in the renaissance period devoted to this episode. The starting point this evening is the mass by Clemens non Papa, which is based on his own motet Pastores quidnam vidistis (Who did you see, Shepherds?), which the Tallis Scholars recorded in 1986, helping to give Clemens a new profile. The five movements of this mass act as a sandwich to similar texts by other masters from the late renaissance, from all over Europe. Clemens himself was Flemish. The Spanish Victoria is well-known, the Portuguese Pedro de Christo less so. Our first half ends with a magnificent double choir motet by Giovanni Croce, written within the Venetian tradition of answering choirs. The meat of the sandwich in the second half is made up of two settings of the Salve regina. The Obrecht was one of the first motets in history to use as many as six voices - this remained unusual in the late 15th century. By the time Peter Philips (no relation) was writing a hundred years later, six voices was the least of it. Here he joins the Italian tradition of writing for double choir in the grandest fashion. The music then concludes with the mesmerising beauty of the Clemens' 'Agnus'.

 

22 December 2023, 19.30, £30.00-£65.00
Polyphony & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Bach's Christmas Oratorio

For the first time this year, Polyphony will perform Bach’s Christmas Oratorio as part of the St John’s Smith Square Christmas Festival. With leading soloists and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, expect vocal, choral and instrumental virtuosity, all under the inspired direction of Stephen Layton.

 

23 December 2023, 19.30, £30.00-£65.00
Polyphony & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Handel's Messiah

“I come to hear this every year. For me this is when Christmas begins.” For many people, Polyphony’s Christmas Festival performance of Messiah is the start of their annual celebrations. This year will be no exception, with a stunning team of soloists, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the “ever-impressive” singers of Polyphony.