Music
at Saint Faith's:
The
Summer Saturday Recitals
The background story...
Once upon a time Saint Faith's, like most other parish churches, was more or less open all hours. With the growth of theft and vandalism this openness, sadly, came to an end, and for many years we were open only for worship.
Then, in 1998, we started to try to reverse the trend, if only on a small scale. We were enduring a particularly long interregnum, awaiting the appointment of a new Vicar, while at the same time making plans for the forthcoming centenary of St Faith's foundation. It seemed like a good idea, as well as a focus for activity and a boost to the congregation's morale at a difficult time, to open the church on Saturday mornings, making visitors welcome, selling them refreshments and assorted sales items and offering them free musical entertainment.
In June 1998 the first Summer Saturday Open Church recital series began. It was planned to run until the end of July but eventually continued for a further month. The music in that first season was all organ recitals, and the visitors were relatively few (30 was considered a good attendance) - but we felt that it was a successful venture and had no hesitation in planning a follow-up recital series for 1999.
In subsequent years the whole thing slowly grew. The season began earlier and ran until the end of August. The music still featured organ recitals, but soloists young and old, as well as small ensemble groups, performed on piano, strings, woodwind and brass. The teams of church openers and refreshment servers had more people to cope with, as the reputation of the Summer Saturdays as a place to meet friends old and new and relax to good music continued to grow.
In recent years the series has begun on the Saturday after Easter. As you can see from the archived programmes (linked below), we have continued to feature a wide range of talented musicians, not merely from Crosby and district, but from further afield: the number of performers ranging from one to some fifty. Over recent yearts, the attendance continued its steady upward trend, with fifty or so being the usual number, and on some occasions well over a hundred turning up.
The twelfth series of concerts will
begin
as usual on the Saturday of Easter week 2009.
The 2009
Recitals
Programme
Changes
since the first posting of this programme are listed in red.