Kamarikuoro PiCCante

Thornbury Tour 2025

Thornbury Choral Society had the great pleasure of hosting Kamarikuoro PiCCante in 2025. They wished to join us at our Workshop on Saturday 1 March and we invited them to stay in our homes from the previous Wednesday night.

This is what they have said to us afterwards:

Starting from the first contact to Thornbury, we experienced such heartwarming welcome we never experienced before. And somewhere between the first contact and the final reservations, the trip had changed into a friendship visit.

It looks like singing makes people become close very fast. All of our hosts and us together formed a group which had a few wonderful days together. We learned so much from each other not only about singing but also about history, culture, nature, climate, politics and of course music. Our special thanks also to St Mary’s Church Choir and it’s conducter Alex Hiam who welcomed us attend the choir practice. It was great fun and great to get to meet more singers. We hope we did not mess up the rehearsal too badly.

One of the many highpoints of our trip and the original reason for it was the workshop by Thornbury Choral Society in Alveston. We had been practicing the two large pieces, but learning more about them was a day to remember. Thank you also to Steven Kings for an unforgettable introduction to Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and accompanist Alison Howell for helping us. The whole concept of workshop was great! Getting singers from several choirs to work on a piece for a day, taking it seriously but not without humor – absolutely a fantastic idea! And everybody was so nice and friendly, to each other and even to us foreigners. I think we all attending the workshop did really build up a new choir, only for that day.

Saturday night, after a fairwell dinner with the hosts, we had to say goodbye. With tears in our eyes! We had come to meet nice and hospitable people, we left behind a large group of friends. But with a hope to meeting soon again!

So, thank you, thank you, thank you a million times to Thornbury Choral Society for the incredible time we had!

With love from PiCCante: Eija, Kristiina, Mari, Marjukka, Pamela, Sanna, Tuula, Antti and Arto

Here is a brief summary of their visit.

Wednesday 26 February
Arrive in Thornbury and meet hosts