Mirabilé, a Nottingham based all-female vocal ensemble, perform at Ruddington.
After a day of muggy heat, which even a flash rainstorm didn’t relieve, the cool spacious enclave of St Peter’s Church in Ruddington was a welcome place to settle down for an evening of choral music. Mirabilé are a Nottingham based all-female vocal ensemble, founded by Joy Nichol in 2002, who have performed nationally and internationally, and won the Female Choir category at the International Eisteddfod Competition in Llangollen in 2016.
If all of this suggests sacred repertoire delivered in overly reverential fashion, rest assured that a Mirabilé concert is just as likely to encompass the secular, the popular and, as Saturday evening’s programme demonstrated, the contemporary.
The theme was ‘Earth and Sky’, the repertoire linked by readings of poems and excerpted prose pieces. The first half concentrated on works evoking the majesty of nature, the second on themes of night, water and renewal. Conducted with consummate professionalism by their current artistic director Anthony Rose and ably accompanied by pianist Richard Cox, Mirabilé began with Bob Chilcott’s ‘Furusato’, a perfect showcase for their talents which won over the audience immediately.
Moving through works by Jason Robert Brown, Susan LaBarr and Frank Tichell, this first section built toward a stunning finale in Ola Gjeilo’s ‘Song of the Universal’. Here, Mirabilé achieved something genuinely mystical and uplifting. Cox’s accompaniment - up to this point backgrounded and unobtrusive - became a part of the choir, weaving a mellifluous dialogue with the singers. It wasn’t just the cool atmosphere of the church’s interior that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and I spoke to several audience members who described being profoundly emotionally moved by the piece.
After a short break and a gladly received glass of Prosecco (I’ve only ever imbibed red wine in a church before), the ‘night, water, renewal’ section commenced with Bob Chilcott’s ‘Like a Bird Singing’. This was perhaps not the most impactful choice to kick off the second half: the following number, Elaine Hagenberg’s ‘Shadow River’, would arguably have proved a better gambit. Likewise, the inclusion of Eric Whiteacre’s ‘The Seal Lullaby’ threatened to steer proceedings into the arena of the mawkish. Fortunately, the course was righted with soloist Hannah Flynn’s remarkably accomplished rendition of Schubert’s ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’, one of the few pieces on the bill not written by a living composer. Easily the most over-performed of Schubert’s lieder, Cox infused the accompaniment with a commendable degree of urgency, and Flynn responded with a vocal display that earned sustained applause.
The inclusion of spoken texts was a nice touch and some of them worked wonderfully, in particular the linking of Brown’s ‘Stars and the Moon’ and LaBarr’s ‘Orion’ by Walt Whitman’s ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’, delivered with wit and élan by Francesca Taylor. Elsewhere, obvious choices such as Mary Oliver’s ‘The Wild Geese’ risked seeming hackneyed when plenty of alternatives could have been utilised. Seamus Heaney’s ‘Postscript’, for example, would have been a natural fit for the ‘night, water, renewal’ half.
But this is mere carping. After all, Mirabilé are a vocal ensemble, not a poetry slam outfit. And judged in terms of their musical ability, purity of tone and how well their voices work together, there is nothing to criticise. St Peter’s Church was a pleasing venue given the oppressive weather, but you’d normally expect to see talent of this calibre packing out the Royal Concert Hall.
Mirabilé played St Peter’s Church, Ruddington, on Saturday 14th June 2025.
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