Chichester’s St Richard Singers to give their final concert

It will be a sad day for their founder and former musical director Noel Osborne who stood down from the choir in 2004. He is committed to another concert on June 26 and so will miss the choir’s last-ever performance but he is delighted to have been invited to conduct a piece during their last-ever rehearsal.

Founded in 1970, the St Richard Singers can lay claim to being the oldest chamber choir in Chichester. But the double impact of first the pandemic and then the cost-of-living crisis has meant they feel they can no longer carry on: “It seems that they have run out of steam in two or three ways,” Noel said, “and obviously for all choirs Covid was such a downer and it seems some of the members of the choir, now they are back, are coming to the end of their singing careers.”

The cost of venue hire has also been a major factor: “I am sad. It has been a focus for a long time for some really good choral music. When we started we were the only one outside the cathedral choir. We were the only chamber choir in Chichester and there are several now so I do hope that those people who want to carry on will find other opportunities elsewhere.”

The St Richard Singers grew in effect out of the Thomas Weelkes Society (named after the Chichester Cathedral organist) which grew out of the then Bishop Otter College and was run by the Rev Donald Eperson: “He was a Weelkes expert and they would sit around the table and sing Thomas Weelkes. He retired in the late 60s and about three of this group approached me in 1969 and said would I be interested in starting a new choir. At the time I was in the cathedral choir and I had a bit of a track record as a choir trainer. I said OK let's see what happens and the three of them and I met in Donnington vicarage. We sang around the table for a couple of months and we advertised to get more people to come along to set up this new choir.”

Clearly a new name was needed: “The Thomas Weelkes Society was not exactly box office. We knew he had to change the name and we came up with the St Richard Singers because of our very close associations with the cathedral. Our patron was the Dean. It got to March 1970 and we decided we were ready to do our first concert and we suddenly had to come up with a name.”

The choir was due to celebrate its 50th anniversary in March 2020 and in the months following, but that was when the lockdown descended. And from the lockdowns – and now the cost of living crisis – it has never really recovered, finally taking the business decision to close down.

“But we did have some very good times,” Noel recalls. “We sang in all sorts of places. We sang in St Paul’s Cathedral and we did quite big works and concerts. We opened the first Chichester Festivities in 1975 and we closed one or two Festivities as well with the final concert.

"There have definitely been some very good times along the way.”

​

​