Welcome to
The Church of England in Faversham, Kent, UK
Your Church of
St Mary of Charity
Faversham
Choir
The church choir has around 16 members and consists of junior and adult members covering all the vocal parts. The choir has built up a good reputation for leading worship especially in our cathedrals. The choir have sung in many cathedrals throughout the country including Truro, Peterborough, Norwich, St David’s and Canterbury Cathedrals in recent years. 2019's choir tour was to Guildford Cathedral. Music is sung from across the centuries, ranging from plainsong dating back hundreds of years right through to contemporary works by living composers.
Director of Music
Ben Saul
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Our Director of Music is Ben Saul. His role involves training the choir and covering all the musical provisions throughout the church. His musical experience is also used in the task of teaching new choral works and exploring new forms of worship. During the course of rehearsals, the choir's voices are developed and their musical knowledge is expanded.
Joining the Choir
Are you a good singer? Join the choir!
If not, would you like to be? Then join the choir!
All singers receive vocal techniques throughout rehearsals as part of their membership of the choir and are assisted to achieve their full musical potential. Any choir member can work through the RSCM Voice for Life to work towards different goals.
Commitment and enthusiasm are the only requirements for joining the choir and we would love to hear from any singers interested.
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Please contact choir@stmaryofcharity.org or telephone 01795 530553 (Parish Administrator) and your details will be forwarded on straight away.
About Truro
Helen Jeffries
St Mary of Charity Choir went on tour to Truro for the first weekend in September 2023 to sing the services in the cathedral. Cathedral choirs have the summer off to give the choristers (usually boys and girls aged about 8-13) time off in the school holidays. Good parish church choirs can then fill in by singing cathedral services during summer. It's a bit of an honour to be allowed to sing in a cathedral - they take trouble to ensure a choir that's singing for them is good enough and isn't going to spoil the worship for their congregations! Truro is a special cathedral for our choir because we've been there once every ten years for a very long time, and one of our longest serving and most precious members comes originally from Truro.
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The Sunday services were more stressful because - like many cathedrals - Truro live streams its services. That mean that we would be being broadcast to anyone in the world who wanted to watch us on YouTube and equally any mess-ups would be preserved forever! Luckily things went well - and we even got a "fan" message from a listener overseas!
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We sang our first evensong in the cathedral on the Friday afternoon. Although our church is large, it was immediately a different experience to sing in a space as large as a cathedral. We sang the introit (the piece before the service) in a side aisle where the sound was very resonant and totally different to what we are used to. We then sang the rest of the service in the main choir stalls where it was important to project and try to fill the space. The congregation mainly sat around us but some stayed down in the nave and we had to make sure they could hear too! Patti Whaley our organist had the extra pleasure (and challenge) of playing the Truro cathedral organ which is extremely good - our organ in Faversham is good, but the Truro one is something really special. Patti was able to respond to this amazing instrument and get some brilliant sounds from it.
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Probably the most stressful piece was Justorum animae by William Byrd. It's the 400th anniversary of Byrd's death this year, and the words "Justorum animae" are the text from the Book of Wisdom saying "the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God" so suitable for remembering the dead. The piece is unaccompanied so the voices have no support, and it is in five parts instead of the most usual four. After incredibly hard work by Ben Saul, our Director of Music, and everyone involved, we managed to sing something that was really special. You can hear it at the beginning of the service in this video on YouTube: