Welcome to the Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society
The Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society is a friendly, amateur, mixed-voice choir drawing singers from all walks of life, student to senior. We are led, taught and inspired by our professional music director – the conductor and pianist Robyn Sevastos – and accompanist Craig Hudson. Each year, the Choir stages two major works from the classical choral repertoire, with professional soloists and orchestra, and two more informal concerts, at Christmas, and in the summer.
If you would like to sing with the Choir, please check the membership page. Rehearsals take place on Mondays during term time, 7:30-9:30pm, at St John’s Church, Amherst Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN4 9LG.
Forthcoming Concerts
Saturday 28th June 2025, 7.30 p.m.
Jubilee Theatre, Holmewood House School, Langton Green
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast
Elgar. Sea pictures; excerpts (in a choral arrangement by Donald Fraser)
Ralph Vaughan Williams. In Windsor Forest
Conductor: Robyn Sevastos
Tenor solos: James Beddoe
Accompanist: Craig Hudson
Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society
Sunday 9th November 2025, 3 p.m.
Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
James Whitbourn. Annelies
Conductor: Robyn Sevastos
Soloist TBC
Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society
This concert is being held as a memorial to Tunbridge Wells-born James Whitbourn (1963-2024). He was educated at Skinners School before winning a scholarship to Magdalen College Oxford.
His work Annelies is a setting for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra or – as used in this performance – an ensemble of violin, cello, clarinet and piano. The libretto by Melanie Challenger sets excerpts in English translation from the diary of Anne Frank (Annelies Marie Frank). It chronicles the fear of capture by the Nazis, through the time spent in hiding in Amsterdam, to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen where she died.
Saturday 13th December 2025
St James Church, Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells
Programme to include:
Rutter. Where icicles hang
Conductor: Robyn Sevastos
Soloist TBC
Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society