An honour to sing with Honour , 12 November 2016

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and a–glow”

(Opening of Honour 1V, Andrew J Smith)     

We provided the second half of this very special evening. Quite a few of us are in both choirs but those who aren’t were able to sit and enjoy this rather inspiring concert, In Remembrance. The Honour Choir    was formed originally for a large scale event that took place on 2 August 2014. Read all about it on their web site. Unusually, this choir does not meet every week for a couple of hours like most but meets every six weeks or so for a four hour rehearsal. Success is dependent on members working on their own and learning pieces quickly.

And successful they were.

This very special concert was enhanced by the spoken word parts written by Honour choir member and soon-to-rejoin Ordsall A Cappella Singers Christopher Bowles. This included letters between a young man and his fiancée, a meeting with Edith Cavell just before her execution and the story of one family whose relation went missing in action. Particularly touching was the letter from the solider of his longing for colour. Chris performed this rather than just reading it. All of the readers in any case did more than merely read. Extremely moving as well was when choir members shouted out the names of local soldiers who had fallen in the Great War.   
  

The songs weren’t necessarily the usual ones that make up Remembrance Services although we heard Abide with Me, Ave Verum, and In Remembrance. We also heard Blue Skies, Fix You and Wonderful World. We know most of the songs though two especially composed ones, The Somme and the Ancre and Honour 1V were unfamiliar to us and particularly dramatic and appropriate for the occasion.

After a brief pause for tea and biscuits it was our turn. We whizzed through a fair bit of our normal non-Christmas repertoire. By this time, the Honour Choir members who are not also in Ordsall A Cappella Singers sat down to watch. It is so good having another choir urging you on. They are so appreciative and encouraging. Jeff got the audience doing a couple of things. Again, choir members were useful.     

During the interval I met someone I knew. I hadn’t known he was going to be there. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “How did you find out about the concert?”

“Facebook,” he replied. 

So, it works.        
       

We had a respectable audience. There’s room for more. No doubt there will be soon. 

We used Brunswick Parish Church, which is where Honour normally rehearses. Ordsall has used it a couple of times as well both for concerts and rehearsals. It’s a friendly place and this also helps to make the event successful. 

Tomorrow, I’ll post about what else we did at the weekend.     

Lighting the Legend, 4 November 2016

Back again in our spiritual home, and singing just outside of where we normally rehearse, we were again pleased to take part in this yearly event. Though we now sing in a variety of places and our members come from all over Greater Manchester and even beyond, we are the Ordsall  A Cappella singers, and we owe Ordsall.

There was a magical atmosphere again as people gathered with their beautifully fashioned lanterns ready for the parade up to Ordsall Hall.

This year Lighting the Legend kickstarted a week of events celebrating Salford TUC’s 150 year anniversary.

Yes, our songs reflected that sentiment exactly:

“Until nations cease to be,

Unison in harmony.”  

And “Drops of water turn the mill, singly none”. Definitely trade union spirit in those words.

Outdoor events and Greater Manchester are always bit of a risk; it poured. But we were well equipped with umbrellas and hats and it would take more than a few drops of rain to daunt Ordsall spirit. We tried to defy the weather by also including a rendition of newly learnt Here Comes the Sun. You know what?  The rain did stop for a very brief period after that.

Something else is very clear too: Ordsall rocks.  

Great fun for the choir again. And thank you for the sandwiches, Ordsall.  

Wig, hats and Wind in the Willows –singing at the Lowry 29 October 2016

Lovely to be invited again to sing in this fantastic space to help at the Family Fun Festival. We had fun too. Well, don’t we always when we sing? And getting to wear wigs and fancy hats and other funny things was just the icing on the cake.

Hats and wigs and other fun things. 

It was a bit of a challenge getting there:

·         Manchester United were playing at home in the afternoon

·         The matinee of a big musical was taking place at the theatre

·         There was an Open Day at Salford University

·         There were replacement busses on the Bury Metrolink line.

But would we let that put us off? Of course not! Twenty or so of us made it there and parts were well balanced.

We were looked after very well by Assistant Musical Director Daisy. I Got Rhythm; It Don’t mean a Thing; Deep River; Here, There and Everywhere / Long Winding Road; One Day Like This, Kiss the Girl, Deep River, Hail Smiling Morn; and we ended with Viva la Musica. Did we get the sound right up to the top of that gloriously high ceiling? I think we might have though we didn’t raise the rafters and the roof isn’t in need of repair. Ah, but that’s a song for another day.

Daisy doing great stuff. Love the new hair! 

We sang for forty minutes and what a nice selection of songs. In no particular order, as they say, because I can’t remember the exact order we did them in and forgive me if I’ve left any out, we performed:

We had an appreciative audience, so if you were there and stopped to listen- thank you.   

Several of us were able to stay on and watch Wind in the Willows.  It’s being shown here before it goes up to the West End. A real fun production, and even though it may have seemed a little sophisticated for this audience that had many children in it, they seemed to enjoy it. It’s a well-loved and well-known story so the adults enjoyed it.

There was some super music in it and I found myself thinking that several of the numbers would be fun to sing.

                 

The Hedgehogs, Field Mice and Swallows were delightful. There were a lot of different regional accents in the show – Irish, Brummie, Scouse, and of course Toad himself spoke a wonderful Received English verging on Posh.  

A difficult moment came when a piece of the set didn’t move; they had to bring the safety curtain down and the house lights up. We were still in Toad’s bedroom when he was supposed to be appearing in court. It only took a few seconds to fix and soon the show was underway again.

“It was just a technicality. You know how irksome these can be,” said Toad to the judge when he explained about stealing a car. HA HA!

It seemed like a cast of hundreds but there were just about as many in the cast as there’d been on our choir earlier. Gosh, they worked hard. And there was going to be an evening performance as well.   

The show finished conveniently at about 4.43. We scuttled off quickly to avoid the football crowds.

A fantastic afternoon all round.  No wonder we keep on coming back for more.       

HAPPY NEW (CHOIR) YEAR

Thanks this month to Paul for  as fine summary of September's events.  

 

After a 5 week break we are back on Tuesday evenings in Ordsall. The first rehearsal was great with only a few cries of ‘how does this one go?’ and ‘what are the words in this one?’ All in all a successful return and preparation for our first performance of the year at the Victoria Baths.

Sunday 11^th September saw us return to The Victoria Baths to help in their 110 year anniversary celebrations. The Gala Pool bath  was filled with water thus presenting many temptations to play ‘Dunk the MD’! There was a good audience for both performances, around 50 people each session, and we made a good sound with the water in the pool making for a nice acoustic.

Tuesday 13^th brought the news that Mel and Sue had left. No not two of our ladies but the Bake-Off version and this clearly was the cause of the apocalyptic weather! Indeed, the weather delayed some people, caused others not to be able to get there and left some looking like they had swum to rehearsal! In view of the weather, it was deemed not politic to sing Blue Skies, I Think It’s Going To Rain or Deep River!! Nonetheless, it was a good rehearsal preparation for the weekend events and we did in fact welcome some new members to choir.

Sunday 18^th saw us perform twice in the morning at the Victoria Warehouse Wedding Show and in the afternoon at the Ordsall Allotments Society. We were expertly directed by Daisy, as Flipper was swimming 8 miles at Windermere! It was a good performance with just the oddity of singing Holly Jolly Christmas for a lady who is likely to book us for her wedding in Dec 2017!

In the afternoon we headed just down the road to our spiritual home in Ordsall. We were here to see the ornamental pond which we have sponsored and to help inaugurate the bench in the gardens in memory of Roy, one of our founding members. Tea and coffee were provided as well as a buffet lunch and the bench was dedicated by the Mayor of Salford. We then performed a short set which was very well received in the warm sunshine.

And finally, congratulations to Alto’d Images who came 3^rd if the quiz at Victoria Baths. Well done ladies!

Buxton again – 16 July 2016

It was lovely to be again in this pleasant historic town in the High Peak. The people in Buxton really do get behind both the main festival and the fringe. Ten days before our concerts (United Reformed Church at 11.00 a.m. and St Mary’s at 3.00 p.m.) two of us popped over to the town and distributed leaflets.

Theresa had the crafty idea of handing over the bigger posters with the blu-tak already attached.

“Could we put up one of our posters?” she asked in one of the shops we visited.

“Well, you can give it to me and I’ll put it up,” said the shopkeeper a little sternly. The sternness disappeared after he had quickly read through the details. His eyes lit up. “Oh yes. I heard you sing last year at St Mary’s.”

“Come again this year,” we both said.

He grinned. “I’ll try to get there.”  

No-one said no.  Every shop and café or other sort of business took one of our posters or a bunch of flyers. We even put one through the door of a music shop that was closed.  We scribbled a friendly note on the back. We were pleased at lunchtime on Saturday to see that they were displaying it.   

We don’t know of course who came because they saw a flyer. We have a vague idea who were family members and friends. There were certainly strangers in both venues though some familiar faces too. We took about £400 on the doors and sold twenty tickets electronically. The United Reformed Church only had seven spare seats. If people hadn’t been sitting in the lounge area at the back the main area would have been full. The main part of St Mary’s was full and a dozen or so people had to sit in the aisles. We made gallons of tea and we and our audiences consumed pounds of cake.

“Do they come for the music or the cake?” I asked another tenor.

“Both I should think,” he replied.   

Who are all these people, we wondered. It’s always a little nerve-racking, not knowing whether or not you’ll get a decent audience. We got two delightful audiences, in fact.  

“The acoustic is different here,” Jeff warned us as we started our warm-up at St Mary’s. “Feel it now.”

At both places we sang a variety of new material and well-established repertoire. I noted some enthusiastic applause for both Royals and One Day Like This. Several people closed their eyes as they listened to the lullabies and the silly love songs. There were tears from a few as we sang In Remembrance. We finished with Kiss the Girl and Build me Up Buttercup each time. I thought we gave these two a lot of energy.

And what did our audience think? Well, it says in the Guest Book “A Cappella and Cake – What a lot of fun! Hugely enjoyable.” Perhaps my fellow tenor was right then.

We were helped enormously by Mary from the United Reformed Church and Eric and Eric from St Mary’s. Yes, the people of Buxton really do get behind this vibrant festival. We love being part of it.    

And here's what the Buxton Fringe reviewer, Carol Bowns said.