The resident choir at Penang’s performing arts centre, penangpac, The Actors Studio Chorus, seems to grow bigger every year! This April, the concert will feature almost seventy choristers on stage, accompanied as ever by the proficient Actors Studio Orchestra, to perform a repertoire of songs which is guaranteed to appeal to everyone who enjoys a good tune.

Conductor Martin Rutherford will lead the choir chronologically from early church music with relatively simple harmonies, via a couple of Medieval ditties, to the rich harmonies of the classics, Mozart’s Ave Verum and Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Moving swiftly on through the centuries the audience will be regaled with the Humming Chorus from Puccini’s Madam Butterfly  and two well-known choruses from Verdi’s operas to which everyone will be humming along!

The twentieth century arrives with Sondheim’s plea to Send in the Clowns, a joyous Mary Poppins medley, an extract from the jazz-blues musical classic Porgy and Bess, and the exciting chords of Abba’s Money, Money, Money. 

This is one of the three concerts the Actors Studio Chorus and Orchestra typically perform every year at penangpac, the others taking place in September and December. This September they will perform the music from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Pirates of Penzance, and in December will be the perennially popular Family Christmas Concert.

Choral Favourites Old and New will be on stage at penangpac, Straits Quay, on Saturday 14th April at 8.30pm. Tickets cost RM 40, or RM 100 for four, and can be purchased at the box office or here: https://www.ticketpro.com.my/concert/2279243-penangpac-Choral-Favourites-Old-and-New.html