Chester Bach Singers Fundraiser Concert
Sunday 21st June: Fairview Vineyard, Bickerton

An afternoon of music, wine, and countryside charm.
... Soloists from Chester Bach Singers
... Set in the beautiful surroundings of a local vineyard.
... A relaxed unique fundraising event.

What to expect:
3:00pm: Enjoy the views and a stroll in the vineyard
3:45pm: Live Choir Concert.
Afterwards: Wine • Buffet • Relax & chat

Tickets £20 limited availability book early.
Phone: 07795457347
CLICK HERE TO BOOK

Concert Location
Fairview,
Goldford Lane,
Bickerton,
Cheshire SY14 8LL

(NB: Satnav will take you to Goldford Lane, not the concert location. There is a sign saying "Private Land No Parking" at the end of the track leading from Goldford Lane to Fairview.)

We are very excited about our 2026-7 season as we prepare to celebrate 50 years of music-making as Chester Bach Singers.

We have a series of anniversary concerts and some additional activities currently in the planning stage, so be sure to check into the website regularly for more details.

You can also subscribe to our newsletter below and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Here are some concert dates for your diary:

2026

October 17^th

December 19^th

2027

Workshop January 30^th

March 13^th

May 15^th

October 16^th

December 18^th

On the afternoon of Saturday 14th June 2025, Chester Bach singers performed their Summer Concert - "Taking Flight" - at the Wesley Church Centre in Chester. This was our first concert under the baton of our new Musical Director, Emma Baker.

On the evening of Saturday 22nd March 2025, Chester Bach Singers were joined by  the 18th Century Sinfonia (www.18thcentury.co.uk) to perform Bach’s Mass in b minor at St John's Church in Chester.

This sell-out concert was also the final concert to be conducted by Chester Bach Singers’ Musical Director, Martin Bussey, who has now retired from CBS after 38 remarkable and busy years at the helm.

The images below capture some of the excitement of this landmark event in our history ..

The breadth of styles in CBS programmes has long delighted audiences. Particularly dear to the hearts of members are the major works with orchestra that we perform.

None approaches Bach’s Mass in b minor in terms of scope, ambition and impact.

Essentially, Bach wrote this work as a compendium of his many compositional styles. Its immense scope means it was unlikely that he thought of it as a work that would be sung as part of a service. Rather, it sums up Bach’s varied approaches to writing music.

Some movements are based on existing music, indeed, sometimes choruses are revisions of works that were originally for instruments alone. Threaded through the music is musical symbolism relating to the theology of the texts of the Mass that is only now being fully uncovered by musicologists.

The choir divides into up to eight parts, the trumpets create a blaze of glorious sound, while intimate movements like the ‘Benedictus’ reduce the music to essentially a flute and solo tenor with spare accompaniment.

Always rhythmically alive, with many movements based on Baroque dances, Bach’s b minor mass is one of the greatest yet most rewarding challenges for any choir. It is one which, successfully conquered, provides an audience with a uniquely uplifting experience. 

Chester Bach Singers will be joined for this performance by the 18th Century Sinfonia – a versatile ensemble of specialist period instrumentalists (www.18thcentury.co.uk)

Since their foundation in 2001 they have accompanied numerous choral societies throughout the UK in performances of Handel Oratorios, Mozart Requiem, Bach b minor Mass, Magnificat, St John and St Matthew Passions etc.

On Good Friday, 18th April 2025, the 18th Century Sinfonia will be performing the new edition of Handel’s Brockes Passion in Nottingham Parish Church. 

The principal players of the 18th Century Sinfonia also meet to comprise the 18th Century Concert Orchestra, whose performances combine period instruments, readings, candlelight and sumptuous 18th century costume in uniquely atmospheric recreations of 18th century musical life.  

4:00pm, Wesley Church Centre, Chester

‘Darest thou now, O Soul, walk out with me towards the unknown region?’

The opening of Vaughan Williams’ setting of Walt Whitman’s non-religious text sets the mood of Chester Bach Singers’ exploration of ‘Journeying On’. This concert reflects the idea of the human journey in its broadest sense, with an emphasis on seeking and searching. It encompasses music sung by the medieval pilgrims on the road to Santiago di Compostella in Spain along with later, Renaissance music based on the psalm ‘Like as the hart desires the waterbrooks’. The Pilgrims in Wagner’s Tannhauser return singing from their journey to Rome while the Hebrew slaves in Verdi’s Nabucco lament their captivity in Babylon. Eleanor Daley’s ‘Upon my heart’ reflects on inner searching while Martin Bussey’s "A life's Parallels" is a setting of Christina Rossetti's contemplation of eternity beyond the grave. The village folk in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana rejoice on Easter morning while the chorus in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger glories in the fulfilment that music brings. Threaded through the programme is the searching, meditative music of Hildegard of Bingen from the 11^th century.

Come and  join us as we explore the Sounds of the Fifties. You might be surprised!

The last in the CBS series of concerts tracing choral music through the twentieth century takes us into the 1950s – the new ‘Elizabethan Age’ as it was called at the time in the UK. The era of Elvis (who we haven’t quite managed to fit in) and of West Side Story, one of the most enduring works of the twentieth century.

Leonard Bernstein (currently the focus of the Hollywood movie Maestro) composed his take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the end of the 1950s, transporting the scene to New York and changing the rival families into leather-jacketed gangs. Less well known is that the lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim! These two giants of twentieth-century music produced a new slant on the musical which has remained a firm favourite and CBS will perform a choral suite including songs such as ‘There’s a place for us’, ‘I like to be in America’ and ‘I feel pretty’.

As usual, CBS combines this music with ‘classical’ music of the era. The early 50s saw the Coronation of Elizabeth II. From A Garland for the Queen, a set of partsongs commissioned from various British composers to mark that event, CBS will sing Vaughan Williams’ spellbinding Silence and Music which creates an immense stillness with its spare textures; and John Ireland’s warm evocation of English landscape The Hills. Crossing back to the USA, Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs will involve the choir in various animal impersonations in ‘I bought me a cat’ and will include other, more tranquil pieces too. Michael Tippett’s lively arrangement of Lillibulero takes us to Ireland as part of this whistle-stop tour.

And we’re going to cheat! Focusing a concert on the 1950s offers the chance to cast light on some composers born in that decade who are still with us. Foremost, Master of the King’s Music, Dame Judith Weir. Her set of choral pieces The Song Sung True is all about music and was composed for a choir in London with a very similar makeup to CBS. It is a varied and tuneful set of short movements culminating in a very upbeat setting of Edward Lear’s The Old Man of the Isles. This comes complete with fiddle and bagpipe impressions which reflect Dame Judith’s Scots ancestry. Also represented is Martin Bussey, with his set of three songs, Roses, composed for CBS in 2009. These set poems about roses by ‘old’ Elizabethans – Edmund Waller, William Shakespeare and the celebrated ‘Anon’!

Here's some behind the scenes footage of Chester Bach Singers’ joint performance with Chester Philharmonic Orchestra and Cantiones - Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at Chester Cathedral.

You'll also hear our three prestigious soloists in action – Kathryn Rudge, James Platt, and Joshua Ellicott.

It's the day of the concert, and final rehearsals are in full swing ...