Codetta for Mexico at Easter

placeholder image — Codetta perform Duruflé’s Requiem in La Catedral Metropolitana de Guadalajara.

Codetta perform Duruflé’s Requiem in La Catedral Metropolitana de Guadalajara

Codetta, the internationally acclaimed and prize-winning chamber choir from the city, will be holding a special concert in the beautiful and atmospheric setting of Derry’s Christ Church on Infirmary Road.

The concert will take place on Sunday, April 2, at 6.00 pm, in advance of Codetta embarking on a week-long Mexican tour over Easter.

Under the direction of conductor and musical director Dónal Doherty, Codetta will be performing concerts in Tequila and Guadalajara in the country’s Jalisco province at the invite of the La Fundación Beckmann, with which Codetta has established a relationship in recent years.

The Beckmann Foundation was created in 1998 with the objective of improving the quality of life of the population of Tequila through elevating the academic, artistic and cultural education of its children and young people, and it has forged links with Codetta through the choir’s regular collaborations with celebrated Mexican tenor and honorary Derry man Benito Rodriguez.

At Sunday’s free recital, Codetta will be performing a selection of the repertoire for the trip. Originally scheduled to take place over Easter in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the tour’s postponement that year.

On Tuesday, April 11 , Codetta will give an invitation concert of Holy Week, Easter and Irish works at the Centro Cultural Juan Beckmann Gallardo in Tequila, at which it will perform Media vita and Eirí na gréine by Michael McGlynn; Miserere by Gregorio Allegri; Tristis est anima mea by Francis Poulenc; Ave verum corpus and Haec dies by William Byrd; Exsultate, jubilate by Karl Jenkins; Tread softly by Mark Armstrong; Oh, Danny boy, arranged by Andrej Makor; The parting glass, arranged by Desmond Earley; and the classic Mexican song Bésame mucho by Consuelo Velázquez, arranged by Derry composer Michael Doherty. Soloists for the concert will be Codetta members Rachel Tierney, John Fox, Ciarán Kelly, Aaron Slattery and Helen O’Hare, with Niamh McGowan on violin and Maria Cutliffe on bodhrán accompanying.

The following day, the choir will travel to Guadalajara to perform Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem in the magnificent surroundings of La Catedral Metropolitana de Guadalajara, the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady, with soloists Helen O’Hare and Ciarán Kelly, accompanied by Felipe Adrián Rojero on organ and Yalissa Cruz on cello. The choir will also be reprising a selection of the Holy Week and Easter repertoire from the previous evening’s concert.

Codetta was formed in 2000. Since then, it has earned a reputation for choral excellence, competed in choral festivals across Europe and given many concerts both nationally and internationally, including performances in the United States, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Past highlights include two Prom performances in the Royal Albert Hall in London, Last Night of the Proms in Belfast and as the special guest choir for BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2015, which was broadcast live to an audience in excess of eight million viewers. In May 2016, Codetta performed with Barry Douglas and Camerata in the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

In 2017, Codetta achieved the honour of winning the Fleischmann International Trophy at the Cork International Choral Festival after being awarded first prize in the festival’s international choir competition.

The choir performs regularly with the Ulster Orchestra, in 2019 recording the soundtrack to the film ‘Lost Lives’ and as part of the City of Derry International Choir Festival in performances of Brian Irvine’s Anticlockwise, Howard Jenkins’s The Armed Man and Anton Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 in E Minor, at which it was joined by members of Tequila’s Coro de la Fundación Beckmann — the Beckmann Foundation Choir — for the first time.

With a return to live music-making for the festival in 2021, Codetta, along with members of local choir Momentum, gave a performance of Bob Chilcott’s The Voyage in the Millennium Forum and also presented a memorable late-night concert with Derry-born cellist Kim Vaughan in St Columba’s Church, Long Tower.

For the tenth edition of the City of Derry International Choir Festival in 2022, Codetta, as part of a 100-voice festival chorus, again linked up with the Ulster Orchestra to perform Carl Orff’s epic Carmina Burana, before going on to give an emotive performance of Duruflé’s Requiem in the city’s St Eugene’s Cathedral, where it was once more joined by four members of the Beckmann Foundation Choir who had travelled to Derry to participate, following online rehearsals with Codetta musical director Dónal Doherty. Soloists that evening were the baritone Omar Lara from Opera Studio Beckmann in Tequila and Codetta’s Helen O’Hare.

In the run-up to the 2022 festival, Codetta also took to the stage in a packed Ebrington Square to perform alongside legendary son of the city Phil Coulter in a mass sing of his iconic The Town I Love So Well, which was recorded and broadcast online.

Plans for later in 2023 include July’s Opera Hibernia, a newly established opera initiative based in Derry under the direction of internationally renowned Derry soprano and erstwhile member of Codetta Laura Sheerin, the City of Derry International Choir Festival in October and the annual Messiah and Codetta Sings Christmas concerts in December.