By yon bonnie banks
About the concert
.Join the Sine Nomine Singers, directed by Daniel Gethin, and the talented young Scottish violinist Oliver Michael for a captivating musical and poetic pilgrimage through Scotland.
Date: Saturday, 8 February 2025
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: St George’s Church, Bickley, BR1 2BE (at the intersection of Bickley Park Road [A222] and St George’s Road) (map).
The programme is an extended love song to Scotland, its music and its poetry. Throughout the evening, readings from Scottish poets will enrich our journey, taking us to the furthest corners of the country.
Our concert opens with a rare example of early Scottish polyphony by Robert Ramsey, who followed King James VI of Scotland to London when he became King James I of England. Then at the heart of our journey come James MacMillan’s striking Strathclyde Motets with their unmistakable harmonic language. Oliver Michael will then play some Wieniawski and Joseph Joachim’s Schottische Melodie. The choir return with two folk songs - Ralph Vaughan Williams’ setting of Ca’ the yowes’ for male voices and Anna Semple’s My bonny lies over the ocean for female voices. We conclude the first half with more polyphony from Robert Ramsey in How are the mighty fallen.
Opening the second half, we find the man whose poetry has symbolised Scotland throughout the ages, Robert Burns, in a rather surprising setting of five of his poems in German by Robert Schumann.
Oliver Michael will then perform a medley of Scottish folk tunes, specially composed for this concert by his grandfather Richard Michael, the eminent Scottish jazz pianist and educator.
With MacMillan’s wistful Gallant Weaver we then pivot towards well-known folk songs by some of the finest contemporary arrangers, finishing with a King’s Singers arrangement of perhaps the most charming of all Scottish lyrics My love is like a red, red rose.
We look forward to an enchanting evening celebrating Scotland’s rich musical and literary heritage and very much hope that you will be able to join us. Tickets are available at the door (£15; £5 for students and job-seekers).
Performers
Daniel Gethin
After reading English at Cambridge University, Daniel Gethin embarked on a career as a countertenor and director, singing first at New College, Oxford as a lay clerk before moving to London, where he is currently one of the regular singers at St Paul’s Cathedral. He has performed across all of London's major churches and concert halls as well as touring and has worked with vocal ensembles such as Tenebrae, The Sixteen, Cardinall’s Musick, Academy of Ancient Music, La Nuova Musica and Ex Cathedra. He is a core member of Vox Medicea, a Florence-based ensemble which seeks to revive polyphony from the era of the Medici family. He is the Director of Choral Music at Our Most Holy Redeemer, Exmouth Market and St Mark’s, Myddleton Square, alongside Dulwich choir, Myriad. He has also worked for the charity Pimlico Musical Foundation as a Teacher-Singer since its foundation in 2018, combining his loves for singing and education.
From the programme of 10 October 2026.
Oliver Michael
Oliver Michael began the violin at the age of four with Karina MacAlpine and achieved his Grade 8 with Distinction at age 11. He studies with Dominika Rosiek and has been mentored by Nicola Benedetti and Guy Braunstein, former Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He has received awards at Beckenham, Blackheath and Maidstone Festivals and in 2024 was the youngest ever winner of the Trinity Musician of the Year Award, performing the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with members of the London Mozart Players. Oliver is a music scholar at Trinity School, has received scholarships to attend Pro Corda violin and chamber music courses and the MusicWorks chamber programme and is a member of South London Youth Orchestra 1. As a treble, Oliver appeared as Miles in Britten’s Turn of the Screw at the Theatre Royal Bath, Yniold in Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande with Iván Fischer/Budapest Festival Orchestra and Die Knaben in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Glyndebourne Opera and performed in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ground-breaking Montag aus Licht at Opera dé Lille. He was the treble soloist in a live-to-screen performance of The Fellowship of the Ring at the Royal Albert Hall and sang on the soundtracks to the film Spirited and the Netflix series All The Light We Cannot See. Other performances include Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream with Opera de Rouen, Berlioz’s L’Enfance Du Christ with the Monteverdi Choir/Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
From the programme of 8 February 2025.
The choir
Sopranos
- Kathryn Bartlett
- Jenny Burgess
- Fiona Davey
- Penny Davies
- Anne Greenidge
- Vanessa Holland
- Nancy Khan
- Karen Mackintosh
- Katie Mackintosh
- Sue Oldham
- Sue Thompson
Altos
- Ruth Brook
- Laura Davey
- Emily Grant
- Natalie Robinson
- Jill Saudek
- Rachel Sloan
Tenors
- Ralph Barlow
- Craig Myers
- Matthew Price
- Nick Stein
Basses
- Charlie Crabtree
- James Loader
- Clive Richards
- Peter Thompson
Singers
- Daniel Gethin
- Bob Pruden