(From last year’s photos)
So what happened to the sunshine? On Sunday afternoon, around 30 of us stood in a beautiful garden on Selby Road in blazing sunshine. Our audience sprawled on the grass or sat on the chairs and were very appreciative of the singing. All in a very good cause as well.
Singing in the open air brings both joy and challenge. Sometimes, it’s difficult to hear the accompaniment and sometimes you seem to lose contact with the other side of the choir, but if mistakes were occasionally made (mainly by the conductor!) it was all very good humoured. I spoke to one of the listeners as I left the garden and she said not to worry about the mistakes as it adds to the character of the performance. I think that was a compliment!
We sang great sing-a-long tunes such as ‘When I’m 64’ and ‘The Leaving of Liverpool’ and we also got some enthusiastic audience participation with anthems such as ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. I got to click – which is always good – in ‘Fever’ and the people in the garden absolutely loved ‘Down to the river to pray’ – you could see the pleasure on their faces. Well done, Jenny and Beth!
Of course, the greatest pleasure for us singers was the gradual disintegration of our director over the course of the 45 minutes. Maybe this was due to Mike’s stag do – alcohol and late night – or maybe it was just a touch of summer madness. Who knows, but it was fun! Words got mixed up, verses got mixed up or possibly forgotten and there was much tittering in the ranks. Perhaps it’s as well that we got all the mistakes out of the way before the concert on the 24th – you know what they say about dress rehearsals.
But it was brilliant! Lively, joyful, great sound and a great feeling of comradeship in the group. And some went up the road for tea and cakes afterwards. What more could you ask for. Bring it on!
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