Choristers from all over the country will descend on Teapot Valley this month for a concentrated week of classical choral choir music, but their public performance of Haydn’s ‘The Creation’ held at the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts on Sunday, 19 January at 2pm, will be Teapot Summer School’s last hurrah.
Judy Bellingham, one of New Zealand’s top vocal clinicians and chair of the school’s trust, acknowledges the Teapot Summer School has played an important part in many singers’ lives but, as numbers of attendees dropped, the school’s closure became inevitable. The Teapot Summer School was originally part of the New Zealand Combined Choir and Orchestra Trust established by Carl Browning, who settled in Nelson after helping to establish the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. In 2001, Browning set up a summer residential choral school at the Teapot Valley Christian Camp, which grew into the Teapot Summer School. The camp’s tranquil environment was perfect for choristers, who rehearsed up to six hours a day before a public performance.
Well-known choral conductor Sir David Willcox, a luminary of the British choral scene, conducted the first six schools, and now for the eighth and last time, Ebbe Munk from Denmark, formerly director of the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir.
The final Teapot Summer School performance will be accompanied by the New Zealand String Quartet and Nelson musicians Clare Monti, Anna Maitland, Saul Gibney and Raffaele Bandoli.
