On 22nd November 2020, St Cecilia's Day, we celebrated our 25th anniversary.
Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it impossible to meet face to face. However, we are still celebrating the anniversary season in style. Watch this space for more information as the season progresses. We are very pleased that our silver jubilee season is being sponsored by Power NI.
We have released a 25th anniversary video, filmed in five of our favourite churches in Belfast, which you can view from this page. There is more information in the description on YouTube, and you can find out more about the buildings - and why they are special to us - here. These are only a small number of the 117 venues in which we have performed.
We were delighted to have an hour long feature dedicated to sacred music and our first 25 years broadcast by BBC Radio Ulster Classical Connections on the day of our anniversary. In this programme, John Toal interviewed Archbishop Eamon Martin, Sir James MacMillan, founder members The Priests, our Musical Director Donal McCrisken and member Sheelagh Greer.
You can view an extract from our members' Christmas event with Wynne Evans. At Christmas, we also presented carols at St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast, in aid of the Black Santa appeal - you can read more here. We are also running a series of Prestige Talks and Workshops - so far in 2021 held online events with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Simon Keenlyside, Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Felicity Lott, Giselle Allen, Ailish Tynan, Ingrid Surgenor and Della Jones. BBC Classical Connections have broadcast extracts from some of these events. These include the events with with Sir Thomas Allen (listen here at 25:00) and Dame Felicity Lott (listen here at 28:00).
In this series we are also showcasing some of the top young vocal stars from the island of Ireland - you can watch excerpts with Dr Gavan Ring, Kevin Neville, Ava Dodd, Mary McCabe and Rebecca Murphy.
We are also planning further online events during the remainder of the season, to be invited to these please join our mailing list via the box on this page.
The following timeline shows just some of the memorable events of our first 25 years, and at the bottom of the page you can view a video photo montage covering some highlights from our story to date.
