Celebrated composer Cecilia McDowall is set to be in the audience as Kingston Choral Society perform her composition, the Da Vinci Requiem, at All Saints Church on 18 November.

Ms McDowall is one of the UK's leading composers of sacred and secular choral music. International Record Review has praised her for "a communicative gift that is very rare in modern music".

Conducting the concert of British music is Andrew Griffiths, musical director of Kingston Choral Society. He is also head coach at the National Opera Studio with a busy freelance career in the worlds of opera and choral music.

Ms McDowall said: "I'm a huge admirer of Andrew Griffiths, and a passionate believer in the importance of choral singing at every level.

"We have some of the finest professional and amateur singers in the world here in the UK, and I love that choral singing permeates to the grass roots, so that I can hear excellent performances of my music by committed community choirs like KCS."

The Da Vinci Requiem has a local origin - Wimbledon Choral Society commissioned Ms McDowall to write it in 2019, to mark the quincentenary of the artist and polymath's death.

The commission was close to the composer's heart. Da Vinci's Notebooks were a gift from her mother to her father, which fascinated her as a child, and which she thinks of as 'an old friend'.

The Requiem premiered in the Royal Festival Hall in early 2020. If you missed the original live performance, or heard and loved it, here's your opportunity to catch it again. It is also available on CD from Signum.

Kingston Choral Society has previously performed two of Cecilia McDowall's compositions – a Fancy of Folksongs, in 2013 and again in 2022, and Christus Natus Est in 2019.

The concert will also feature Benjamin Britten's Te Deum in C, George Dyson's Hierusalem and Grace Williams's Elegy for Strings.

The choir will be accompanied by the Thames Sinfonia, and joined by award-winning soloists, soprano Katherine Crompton and baritone Gareth Brynmor John.

In 2020 McDowall was presented with the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for a 'consistently excellent body of work'. And in 2021, received the coveted annual commission to write the carol for the Choir of King's College to be part of the much-loved Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast world-wide on Christmas Eve.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Sir George Dyson Trust.

Kingston Choral Society is grateful for the financial support of the Humphrey Taylor Richardson Charitable Trust. 

 Tickets available online or on the door

Venue: All Saints Church, Market Place, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 1JP

Date: Saturday 18 November, 7.30pm. Doors open 6.45pm. Open rehearsal 2.30-4.00pm