By Ralph White.
Southampton’s “Red Stars”, a Southampton radical, secular choir performed a set of 9 songs on Saturday afternoon at the Medieval Merchant House, French Street in the old quarter (13/9/25).
It was one of the 54 venues used by Music in the City, a marvellous annual feature on Southampton’s cultural calendar. It was also the first time this extremely well curated, authentic 13th century town house was used in this way.
The Red Stars are grateful to English Heritage and especially their local team of volunteers for making this venue available for live music.
It seemed fitting that our first song was John Ball, a traditional song about a radical priest from the 14th century who was active in the politics way back then, namely the Peasants’ Revolt. The venue would have been a relative new build in his time.
This modest-sized two-storey house with rear courtyard was a great success for live music. The number of visitors over the course of late morning to late-afternoon on Saturday were in the many, many hundreds.
Although the majority we spoke with were local, a lot of them had never previously visited the Medieval Merchant House. For English Heritage this must have been an excellent PR and awareness-raising success.
We also thank Chris Orr and his team for all their incredible, hard work to make this MITC event happen.
The Red Stars rehearse every Monday in the back meeting room at October Books in Portswood. We start at 5.20pm for an enjoyable 75 minutes and would warmly welcome anyone to come and listen to what we do, and hopefully be moved to join. There’s no membership fee although some contribute £4 per session towards the hire of the room.
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