Invitatione was established in 2011 by a group of East Riding musicians and music teachers. We aim to provide high quality live music in local venues, seeking avenues for creative ways of presenting classical music to a wider audience; to create enjoyable and varied performing experiences for our players and singers; and to promote a life-long love of music and music making, and an appreciation of the emotional and social benefits which this can provide.
Our members have ranged from those as young as 11 to those in their retirement. This mix of ages and range of experience amongst members enables the youngest and the least experienced of our group to enjoy the support of others and to tackle challenging repertoire with confidence. Working and developing alongside one another, the experience for all of us is one of exploration and discovery.
We have performed large- and small-scale concerts in churches in Hull, Beverley and Driffield, raising money for charities and good causes. Highlights include a concert for Amnesty International which raised over £2,000 (January 2012); the semi-staged ‘Messiah’ performed in the Church of All Saints, Great Driffield, and then in Hull Minster (Easter 2018); a collaboration with East Riding Theatre using the words of, and music inspired by, Shakespeare (June 2013); and thrilling performances in Beverley Minster of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony (2013), his Tenth Symphony (2015), Strauss’s ‘Four Last Songs’ and Bernstein’s ‘Chichester Psalms’ (2014), the Requiems of Brahms, Duruflé and Mozart; Kurt Weill’s Windband Suite from ‘The Threepenny Opera’ (2017); Dvorak’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies (2016) and, in St. Alban’s, Hull, his Ninth Symphony (2019 and 2024). We also relish the opportunity to sing unaccompanied repertoire from the Tudor and early Baroque periods, and some of our favourite performances have explored vocal and chamber works by Gesualdo, Byrd and Purcell.
If you are interested in being part of Invitatione, or booking us for an event, please email info@invitatione.org.