About us
During September 2019, an announcement was circulated that said:
MusiCórum countdown …
Fed up with the Brexit countdown? Well, countdown instead to 6.00 p.m. on Saturday 12 October 2019 (St Mary’s Church, Pope’s Quay, Cork) and Mid-day on Sunday 13 October 2019 (Saints Peter & Paul’s Church, off Patrick’s Street, Cork) when you can hear Cork’s newest choir (MusiCórum, conductor Geoff Spratt) singing Bruckner (Os justi) and Randall Thompson (Alleluia) during the liturgies. Not to be missed!
The choir noted that, over the last 43 years, through his work with the UCC Choir, UCC Choral Society, Irish Youth Choir, Madrigal ’75, Galway Baroque Singers, Canticum Novum, and the Fleischmann Choir, Geoff Spratt has earned a reputation as one of the finest choral conductors living and working in Ireland. The 33 members of Cork’s newest mixed-voice choir, MusiCórum, are delighted that he has agreed to be their musical director and looks forward to presenting performances of exciting repertory in public concerts commencing in Spring 2020. An exciting new chapter in the musical life of Cork, Ireland’s choral music capital.
The COVID-19 pandemic scuppered the plans made by performing groups throughout the world, and 2020 had to pass with concerts (of music by Bruckner, Thompson & Rheinberger) in Kenmare and Cork put on hold. 2021 saw the choir meet during the autumn, under the strictest of public health protocols, to prepare music by Britten, Holst, Dave O’Keeffe, John Rutter, and Vaughan Williams for a “Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols” in December, but, alas, it had to be cancelled at the last moment. Undeterred, the choir decided to prepare a programme of music by Bruckner and Thompson bookending a performance of unaccompanied Bach played by the brilliant young violinist, Brendan Garde. It renewed its commitment to premièring a substantial new work by one of its members, the gifted young Cork-born and educated composer Dave O’Keeffe. His setting of O magnum mysterium, was a real challenge for the choir, but from the very first rehearsal everyone recognized that it was a piece of exceptional quality that was going to speak very directly and effectively to audiences. An informal performance in the Church of the Ardfallen Methodist Centre in Cork on Saturday 9 April 2022 prefaced two public performances the next day – one in St John’s Church, Killeagh, Co. Cork, and the other in the Honan Chapel, UCC. The programme for these concerts is available on this website.
The choir’s next performances are scheduled for December 2022 when it will be building a Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols around Tucapsky’s The time of Christemas – an evocative and colourful suite of seven movements for mixed-voice choir, guitar, two glockenspiels, tenor drum and tambourine. Full details will be posted shortly.