Hot on the heels of an extremely adventurous tour around California, a further winter venture was in store for Clare Choir. Namely, the wonderful "Es ist ein Ros' Entsprungen" tour around the Netherlands and Belgium—so called because the programme was inspired by various settings of this beautiful Christmas carol. The Choir was able to explore this Christmas theme in their spare time too, visiting many a Dutch Christmas market and frantically buying Christmas gifts for their loved ones, having read the schedule and seeing they would only get back to the UK on 24th December!
Before heading to the Netherlands, however, the Choir had the great joy of giving a concert in St John's Smith Square, showing London the music they had brought to the USA. The concert was very well received, and the audience particularly enjoyed participating in the "quadruple canon" masterclass given by the Director of Music at the start of the second half!
With insatiably itchy feet, the Choir hopped on a Eurostar train the very next morning at 7am, Utrecht headed. Over the course of the following week, the Choir gave concerts in Utrecht, Hasselt, Eindhoven, Dordrecht and Almere, and the concert programme included Sandström's and Vulpius' arrangements of Praetorius' Marian hymn Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen (the namesake of this tour!)—along with the more modern Mathias' A babe is born and Warlock's Benedicamus Domino.