A Day of Singing

 

My oh my. What a lot we did. Five new songs before lunch and another five after. Most of them we sang twice.

As ever there was a mixture of styles: choral pieces, arrangements of popular songs, some quirky fun ones, ones that got us all miming playing trumpets, another that made us behave like robots. Some were more intricate than others.  There were very close harmonies in some and in others more complex parts were slotted against each other.

This was the ideal opportunity to ty out what works for the choir and for other people to find out what our choir is about.

We had four people join us for the day – nicely balanced – as it was one tenor, two altos and one soprano.

It’s an important part of a choir’s business, to try out new materials and find out what works. We did that in spades.     

You don’t need to be able to read music to join our choir though we provide sheet music. There are also practice tracks to listen to.  However, even a complete novice at reading music would surely have picked up something after today?     

How can a Saturday go by so quickly? It certainly did.     

It was hard work but a lot of fun.            

Chorlton Arts Festival 24 May 2025

 

Some of us have been with the choir for many years and others have only joined recently. No matter how long we’ve been members the anticipation builds as we gather in the car park. After a month of sun and heat on a bank holiday weekend the weather has broken.  Yet it’s still quite warm and it’s not actually raining. The temperature is in fact just right for what we’re about to do.  

‘I’m feeling curiously nervous,’ says one of our members.’

‘A few nerves can be useful,’ I reply, ‘as long as you don’t let them get to you.’   

And so they are. A satisfying warm-up calms them and we’re soon in the church where we’re delighted to find a decent- sized audience.         

Chorlton Arts Festival is a wondrous event.  This year it lasted form 16 – 24 May, with a pre-festival event on 6 May, and took place in variety of venues throughout Chorlton.

Many of the events are free of charge though some you need to book for and you can donate to the festival at any event if you wish. This includes some fascinating ones like the group on just before us  - Sign Me Happy  offered a group of primary school children who signed (British Sign language) to music.

The festival has sponsors and patrons but is entirely run by volunteers.

So we were delighted to return to a venue with which we’ve become familiar: St Ninian’s Church at 4 pm on Saturday 24 May.

Our audience is a mixture of friends of the choir, friends of the festival and locals curious about who we are and what we do.

Our performance lasts one hour. We offer most of our current repertoire, including some news songs, ones that speak of peace and hope, special arrangements of popular songs and some old favourites. Some contain parts that some of us find tricky but with the care of other choir members, our warm-hearted audience and our supportive musical director we sail through them.     

We go home yet again glad that we came.  What a nice way to spend an afternoon on a disappointing bank holiday weekend.