What’s to come
Celebrate Christmas 2024
Celebrate Christmas 2024
As the end of the year draws near our thoughts turn to our traditions for the festive season, and music is the perfect way to celebrate with family and friends. The Auckland Philharmonia will be joined again by the marvellous Graduate Choir New Zealand and outstanding Samoan tenor Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono.
The concert programme will include excerpts from J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus alongside Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ and a generous helping of your favourite traditional Christmas carols.
Friday 13 Dec 2024 7:30pm and Saturday 14 Dec 2024 3:00pm
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell, Auckland
Conductor Stephen Layton
Tenor Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono
Choir The Graduate Choir New Zealand | Director Terence Maskell
Just Finished
Spring Concert
Our SPRING CONCERT on 26 th September was a wonderful occasion; you missed a treat if you were unable to be there! Comments afterwards ranged from: “this choir gets better each time I hear it” to “this choir positively needs to be heard overseas” – in short, the punters loved it. Not only did Grads excel in its wide-ranging repertoire, but the guest choir – Mount Albert Grammar’s Gold Award-winning choir, The Centennial Choir, gave a glowing contribution – with audience members fulsome in their praise afterwards. When the MAGS boys joined with the Grads men, there was an amazing TTBB sound that has seldom, if ever, been heard in Auckland. We featured our 2024 Choral Scholarship holder, Dev Murugian and farewelled long-serving Trustee of the choir, Norman Firth.
Gala Recital
On September 28th – two days after our Spring Concert, the choir presented a GALA RECITAL that showcased a wide range of the choir’s repertoire in the beautiful acoustic of St Paul’s Cathedral, DUNEDIN. This was the first visit to Dunedin by the choir and we received a wonderful reception complete with an immediate and prolonged standing ovation at the conclusion of the concert that occasioned two encore offerings.
David Burchell (organ) was in fine form – saying afterwards:
“A truly stunning sound - I’ve never been able to open the St Paul’s organ up fully behind a choir before!”
In her review Judy Bellingham was effusive in her praise, including:
“The Graduate Choir New Zealand kept a good-sized audience spellbound in St Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday evening”. “The singers responded to the authoritative and confident conducting of Terence Maskell with excellent choral sound featuring the layering of voice parts, emotional crescendi and diminuendi, carefully modulated cadence points, attention to musical detail, negotiating of complex rhythms and sensitively shaped phrases”;
“It captured the essence of the text with exquisite tonal colouring in each voice part”; Beauty of choral sound and clear diction were features…”
