Summer’s here! Why not join us for our Summer Concert on Saturday, 8 July from 7.30pm at Netherhall School in Cambridge for an uplifting evening of music with songs ranging from Frankie Valli to Whitney Houston to the Greatest Showman.
Tickets are £8 (£5 for concessions) – under tens go free. All proceeds to HomeStart Cambridgeshire to help support families in need across the county .
By Katie Grace
It was an extra special weekend at the beginning of May. Not only was it the King’s Coronation but it was also the Sing! Community Choir weekend away. Woohoo!! Sixty of us ventured into the Suffolk countryside and descended on Ringsfield Hall, near Beccles. Having stayed in the beautiful Thetford Forest for the past four years, there was some anticipation about how this space would work for us, but I think I can safely say it all worked out very well.
Choir members began trickling in from about 5pm on a slightly rainy and damp Friday evening. Since we were hidden down some country lanes, this was perhaps a little adventure for those arriving after dark! Once safely inside, it was exciting to see all the space we had. There were some ‘soft
areas’ with comfy sofas and chairs for us to relax in. It was also ‘exciting’ to see the bathroom/toilet situation (some members with quick maths skills looked a little pensive at the bathroom-to-weekender ratio; but it all worked out fine!).
Once most of us had arrived and settled in, we launched into a few hilarious rounds of Just A Minute – the popular radio game show, brilliantly hosted by Andy and marvellously masterminded by Marie. We learned that Rowan really does love dinosaurs and how the battle of Hastings actually
happened in 1666! Who knew?!
Off we toddled to our dorms, with a few party people staying up later to enjoy drinks and crafts and late-night chats.
Our social guru Jon miraculously masterminded a timetable for us all so we could enjoy as many different activities as possible. The workshops were run by members of the choir with other talents besides singing. There was glass fusing, printing in nature, haiku writing, improv, movement to
music, felting, lino printing, cross stitch, social crafting and a ‘watching the coronation’ group. Ringsfield Hall also put on some outdoor team building, bushcraft and archery activities for us. So there was plenty to choose from.
Choir members were free to do as much or as little as they liked. Some went for a peaceful walk in the beautiful grounds or found a quiet corner to knit. Some sat on the stairwell plaiting each other’s hair and some found contentment playing the piano. Some even went for a run!
Saturday night dinner was provided by the venue, something we didn’t have at Thetford. It was delicious and much appreciated after a busy day of activities. There was plenty of pasta bake and bolognaise, salad, garlic bread and pudding for us all. With our bellies full, choir members slowly
wobbled out to the campfire to gather under a bell tent of sorts, and enjoyed all being together and having a sing. I heard everyone had a lovely time. (I may or may not have passed out on my bed fully clothed at about 8pm!)
Choir numbers grew on Sunday as we were joined by our lovely choir ‘day trippers’ for our teaching session by Craig Lees and Declan Davies (Craig is the Musical Director behind Leeds Contemporary Singers). I think I can safely say on everyone’s behalf how utterly brilliant they were. Also that most
of us are now seriously considering how we can arrange a musical accompaniment to provide the soundtrack to our lives.
Without introducing himself, Craig brilliantly launched straight into an invigorating warm up. Choir members demonstrated excellent focus and concentration as they touched each other’s knees and massaged each other’s shoulders!
Craig taught us the Whitney Houston belter How Will I Know and how to get emotion into our voices. Who knew there were so many ways to sing the line “How will I know” – maybe with a whimper or a cry or absolute desperation? It was a lot of fun.
Next, Becky and Beth bravely conducted us singing a few songs from our own Sing! repertoire in front of Craig and Declan: the Friends theme tune I’ll Be There for You and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida.
They gave us helpful feedback on how to get more out of performing these songs.
The weekend away sadly came to a close about 4pm and everyone seemed to chip in with the final clean up before heading back to real life.
All in all, it was a great weekend. But don’t take my word for it. Here are a few quotes from other Sing! members about what they thought of our weekend away.
“Everything I expected and more. Nice to meet new people and chill out in this corner of Suffolk.” — Alex
“Wonderful.” — Clare
“Delightful.” — Marie
“Lovely times with lovely people.” — Becca
“Lovely to spend time with people you see every Thursday at choir, getting to know them a bit better in the beautiful surroundings of Suffolk. There are so many talented folk here, sharing their skills.” — Vicky
“Wet. But warmed by the good company.” — John
“Lino printing went amazingly well. I’m happy, happy, happy.” — Lydia
“Getting to know people from other sections of the choir is great. It’s not an easy job to organise sleeping, eating and multiple activities for 60 people. Jon did a brilliant job and seemed unfazed and relaxed. We thank him very much and everyone on the music committee for making this happen.” — Elyse
See you all again next year 🙂
Katie
Please note that these facts may not be correct at time of writing and are purely the mutterings of my tiny mind. I do truly hope there are similarities to real people and actual events that occurred!
You can peruse more photos of the Sing! weekend away on our Flickr album here.
The days are getting longer, the sun is (mostly) shining, and all thoughts turn to the Sing! Summer Concert!
Please save the evening of Saturday 8th July 2023 to join us at The Netherhall School, Cambridge for a fun evening of music and song. We can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on with you!
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay up to date with the latest concert news!
By Una
I’d always loved singing in a group. Some of my happiest school memories came from being part of the choir; performing in shows, going to competitions and enjoying that amazing sense of camaraderie that singing together brings.
Skip forward a few (ok…maybe more than a few!) years and I’d heard about Sing! Community Choir. The rehearsals were local to me and I was encouraged by the fact that I didn’t need to read sheet music or do a scary audition. I thought I’d give it a go, thinking it might be fun and that I might enjoy it.
It was the best decision I’ve made in a long time!
I have loved coming to Sing! rehearsals every week. The whole experience has been so inclusive, welcoming and just downright fun! Even on the rare occasion I couldn’t make it, I knew I would be able to catch up using the lyrics and recorded tracks on the Google Drive.
I never felt any pressure and these were a great way to practise at home too. The rehearsals became a great social experience; it’s lovely to chat to so many different people from all walks of life and enjoy some delicious snacks very kindly provided by a different group each week.
Cut to the night of the Christmas Concert, which also happened to be the culmination of Sing!’s 10th anniversary year celebrations. Arriving at St Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, there was a sense of nervous energy and excitement in the air. We warmed up; we did some last-minute rehearsals, including practising the iconic stomp, stomp, clap to start Queen’s We Will Rock You; and we finally got to do a sound check and get on stage for the first time. Things were definitely getting real and I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt equal parts nervous and excited!
A quick dinner break, a chance for everyone to get changed into their beautiful red and black outfits and it was finally here: show time! Standing up on stage was an amazing experience. I somehow ended up on the raised platform of the stage, so had a perfect view of the audience who had given up their nights (during England’s last match in the World Cup no less!) to come and see us! The support from family and friends was just amazing and really helped to lift us all. The audience really gave it their all, even getting to join in with a very enthusiastic rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas – dance moves and all!
We sang a great mixture of Christmas and non-festive songs. Hearing all the different sections of the choir come together, along with the fantastic soloists, superb band and wonderful cabaret acts was a real highlight for me. My personal favourites included Hallelujah, Holding Out for a Hero (complete with onstage costume change!) and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree with Jingle Bell Rock. We repeated the final song as our encore – thanks to Andy for his amazing conducting, especially the Christmas jacket and fairy lights!
Singing together with around 80 other people was an experience I will never forget. I am so thankful to everyone at Sing! for being so inviting and helping me to recapture my love of singing. I’m already looking forward to the Summer concert! ❤️
Huge thanks to our lovely 10th anniversary Christmas Concert audience, who together helped us to raise more than £1,100 in support of Cambridge Acorn Project
You can recapture the magic of all our concert videos on our YouTube channel here
Look out for more news about our Summer concert coming soon!
— By Marie (Pictured at the Sing! Weekend Away 2022)
I love the fun, creative, accepting, we’re-all-in-this-together atmosphere of Sing! Community Choir.
I love that it’s a community of like-minded, but also very diverse, people. We represent a wide range of ages, backgrounds, opinions, passions – with a shared love of making music. And I love that Sing! makes music accessible – there’s no need for any formal training or even to read musical notations. It’s fun feel-good music that you can’t help but tap your feet and/or sway to.
I love that there’s space for everyone to contribute in their own way; whether you’re an aspiring soloist who wants to break yourself in gently by joining a semi-chorus or duet or whether you’re a shy distinctly average singer who likes to hide at the back (or at the front where you can actually hear your part-colleagues much better for reassurance).
Whether you love to bake, or organise, or make recordings, or store equipment. Whether you can conduct, teach a part, show people where the pub is or lead a simple warm-up; there’s a place for you at Sing! and the choir really does run as a community.
I’ve lost count of how many years I’ve been at Sing! but over that time, I’ve made new friends, been inspired and moved, learned a lot, had so much fun and been a small part of making beautiful music.
When I’d had a long hard day / week I used to sometimes skip a Thursday night rehearsal because I just felt too tired. But now I never skip a rehearsal if I can help it because – even if I felt drained beforehand – singing with lovely people uplifts me; re-energises me; and I leave with more of a spring in my step, humming away as I cycle home.
At the annual weekend away, and other social events, I’ve enjoyed the chance to get to know other choir members better whilst eating, chilling out and doing all sorts of activities together – from a treetop adventure course to board games and tiramisu making!
If you’d like to have a go at singing in our fun, friendly choir, then join us for our free taster sessions from 12th January 2023.
Learn more about what we sing (and how much we enjoy singing it) by checking out our most recent concert videos.
Our term starts on 12th and we’ll be learning material right from the start that we’ll carry on through the term. Our taster sessions run for three weeks:
The best option is to come along on the 12th if you can – if you then decide to join the choir you won’t have missed anything!
If you’re not free on 12th then you’re also very welcome to come and try us out on one of the subsequent weeks.
by Nick Walker
“More!!!”
For the last note of the concert finale, One Day More, we really went for it – choir and band nearly raising the roof of the Atrium Hall.
The audience rose to their feet, cheering and clapping in appreciation of what had been a hugely uplifting, moving and entertaining show. A tribute to the power of music to bring people together. And a payoff for all the hard work done by the movers and shakers of Sing! Community Choir to get us concert-ready, raising serious money for our charity, Romsey Mill.
There were youngsters dancing down the front and old folk tapping their toes. We even managed to keep my Dad (88) awake. On stage they saw a sea of vivid pink, yellow and blue tops, a bit like Elmer the patchwork elephant. Smart move by the wardrobe department!
Sing! Community Choir is special. After a decade of rehearsing and putting on shows, they somehow manage to combine friendly informality with meticulous organisation. I first came for one of their Taster Days in January and loved it. I’m not very good at singing. But I wanted to have a go. I get a buzz from making music with other people. Singing in a choir is prescribed for depression on the NHS: it’s great for your mental health.
Sing! is run by a group of talented and inspiring people, with three of its founder members – Bethany, Naomi and Tizzy – still going strong. It has a rotating cast of volunteer conductors for multi-genre songs, which are taught by ear rather than sheet music.
All year we’ve been learning one or two new songs every week, building up to a repertoire of 14 for the concert. Audio files and lyrics for each part – alto, bass, tenor, soprano – are shared on the web so we can learn them. After a while you absorb these songs until you know them off by heart.
By July 9th, the day of the concert, I felt ready – excited rather than nervous. Blue skies were smiling at us as we gathered for a warm-up in the light and lofty foyer of Netherhall School’s Atrium Hall, with its quirky sawn-off Cadillac from Grease. We ran through the non-band songs while the musicians set up in the hall. Sounded pretty good. Cakes accumulated on side tables. During the interval the audience could have their cake and eat it. Keep them sweet! Another crafty piece of planning.
Then onto the stage to rehearse together with the band. I stood on the back row and enjoyed the view until I started to worry about fainting in the heat. What if I expired in a sweaty heap during the concert and fell backwards? It was a long way down…
We had been on our feet for nearly three hours now, so it was good to take a break. Netherhall playing fields are vast, stretching up a hill. Munching on a sandwich and basking in the still-hot evening sun I spotted a deer emerge from the bushes on the horizon. A good omen.
Changed into our finery, we assembled in a classroom for a final pep-talk from Bethany and took part in Tizzy’s ENERGY chant to get us revved up. Trying to be quiet, we took our positions onstage. The band played the intro to Shut Up and Dance and the curtains parted.
Show time!
We were great. Did you ever doubt it?
Highlights for me were the songs I enjoy singing most – the breezy pop-rush of Rhythm of Love, the bonkers Grace Kelly (belting out the ‘violet skies’ bit gives me goosebumps), the trance-inducing One Day Like This and the epic One Day More.
For those of us who weren’t performing the Cabaret items it was a treat to sit down and enjoy them close-up for the first time. After Welcome Home and Love Medley (15 songs in 2½ minutes) I was tearing up a bit. The occasion was getting to me. When you’re right next to live choral singers it does something to you. When they sing in harmony (doesn’t have to be perfect) it goes straight to the heart.
By Sophie
The first time I went on a Sing! weekend away I was nervous. This time, after three years of waiting, I was excited. Andy and Beth sang in the front of the car, and it felt as if we were kids heading for the seaside. I had to stop myself blurting out, “Are we nearly there yet?”
There were board games on Friday night, which were great for getting us into a flow of daftness, concentration and competition – without the pressure to make conversation.
I liked the way that next morning some people sat quietly reading, while others got straight back into the Bananagrams groove over before breakfast (Cocoa pops as well as sensible granola… yay!)
Saturday was glorious – sunshine, woodland, and a feast of workshops to choose from – physical, reflective, culinary and creative.
The intrepid climbed 18 metre trees (Becca D completing the challenge barefoot); then they navigated a high ropes course, jumping from terrifying platforms.
Other people made bright bunting for the 10th anniversary concert.
I really enjoyed Jon’s “values” session, thinking about what makes us sing. He gave out questions like, “What made you happy as a child? Think of an occasion and describe it to a partner.” The partner then identified the underlying things that made the experience valuable. I really appreciated that quiet time, together with others in a dappled wood; time to really listen, and to be still. That quiet hour of attentive reflection, rippled through the weekend for me in a special way.
I also loved Naomi G’s glass suncatcher making, and Jane’s collaging. Both these activities allowed people who might think “I’m no good at drawing” to have fun playing with shapes and colours. I smile each time I pass the little sun catcher which now hangs on my kitchen window.
Sian taught a further group to make pierogi, a filled Polish pasta, savoury, sweet and tasty.
After lunch lots of singsters meandered through the woods; there was a choice of walks to suit different wishes. One person decided that 500 metres was just the right length for the short stroll!
I’m told that Jon shone in the archery session, while Lindsey hit the fence a few times, but missed the passing DofE children.
A “team challenge” contingent developed their skills of balancing, breath-holding and crossing lava flows (which made me think of my favourite children’s book: Quentin Blake’s “How Tom beat Captain Najork and his hired Sportsmen” in which Tom “fooled around in the mud, and stomped and squelched…he fooled on high-up things that shook and wobbled and teetered”; he was great at “womble, muck and sneedball”)
EA forsook sneedball but excelled at crochet, commenting “It was great. Now I’m hooked!”…
We were treated to a joyful display from Elyse’s line-dancers par excellence.
A mellow collection of people sat in the sun and sang their way through the alphabet, choosing a band for each letter.
The biggest laughs came with Marie and Mario’s Giant Hungry Hippos game. One member of a team lay belly down on a skateboard clutching a laundry basket (as you do); their partner flung them into the middle of the hall where plastic balls had to be gathered into the baskets; the “fisher person” was then hauled back on a rope and the “catch” was unloaded
Naomi said it was “Excellent – a full body workout”. Becca D pushed Marie at super high speeds, while EA and Piete had “some mad thing going where they hoovered up more balls than anyone else.” Top game!
This was followed by a magical woodland campfire. Building fires is one of my favourite things. Beth played her guitar and Andy the ukulele, and we enjoyed many songs from the Sing! repertoire.
Our lovely singing lured the DofE youngsters to join us, abandoning their own fire. We took requests and sang “Sweet Caroline” for Jo, and then “Wonderwall” for Reece. One of them led us on the guitar with “Eye of the Tiger”. I liked the way that the teenagers were part of a motley group of adults, all ages, and able to feel how much happiness there can be in fires and singing.
At the end of that first day, Rob, who hadn’t been away with the choir before, said “this has far, far exceeded my expectations”:-)
On Sunday we were joined by more people, and Helen arrived with the lovely Juliet Russell, who ran two great workshops.
I’m very unmusical, but I really liked watching the way her passion and enthusiasm was visible in every movement she made, and in her wonderfully expressive face (as she told us, “It’s all in the eyebrows!”) I get pleasure being around others who have the musical knowledge I lack, and hearing things like Juliet announcing a song started “in a D minor 7th” and Naomi whooping with joy!
Juliet worked on our unison singing, and encouraged us to make joint decisions about how to express a passage – by, for example, inviting the altos to sing in imitation of the tenors, and to think about how that changed the tone and emotional content of their singing. We worked on Mark De-Lisser’s climate protest arrangement of “What a Wonderful World”, and Juliet sent him a video of us singing. Lindsey immediately requested that he send a selfie in return!
I loved the musical language of onsets, smooth, glottal and breathy; vocal jams and fricatives. And I relished Juliet’s turn of phrase as she talked about “sonic sandwiches”; (some hybrid genre, sci-fi/cookery?) and told us, “The sopranos do all the work here – the rest of us get to have an ‘Oooh-y-holiday’”; and the unforgettable insight that “Oohs” can be “like a cat’s bum, or softer and cuddlier, like going in for a kiss”!
Altogether, it was a wonderful weekend, a real chance to get to know people, and to build our community. As Rob put it so beautifully, “If Putin nukes us, I want to be with Sing! people” 🙂
By Amanda
I joined Sing! Community Choir in January 2021 online during lockdown. I’m often asked about why I joined a choir online in the middle of a global pandemic. Well, why not? What a great way to relieve the cabin fever imposed by lockdown through embracing the positive energy which singing seems to generate. Choir really changed my Thursday evenings.
It was great to finally meet the choir members in July as the first in-person choir meet-ups started in a marquee outdoors. The biggest surprise on the first evening was around how tall or short everyone appeared, having only ever seen them on Zoom!
Choir began to meet in-person in a school hall from September. Within a week or two, we all became more than aware that we were moving at a fast pace towards preparing for the first post-lockdown Sing! concert only weeks away in November; giving us the chance to really hone all those songs we had become so dedicated to practicing and singing through in our own living rooms on mute.
As the weeks progressed, choir meet-ups became rehearsals. We spent less time in our particular voice part groups, and more time singing all those songs through as a whole choir. More emphasis was placed each week on doing your homework: Listening to your part tracks and revising from the lyric sheets, so helpfully prepared to support us by the Sing! committee.
Suddenly, the last two ‘longer’ rehearsals arrived where real commitment was needed from those intending to sing in the concert in order to make up for the lost time caused by lockdown, with no lyric sheets and the full repertoire of 18 months of songs to sing through and perfect.
Not only were we brushing up on singing during this time but lists of tasks to make the concert actually happen appeared, incorporating all those extra COVID-safe guidelines which were necessary for us to adhere to, as well as ticket sales, poster bombing, staging and sound set up, baking and sanitizing everything! Precision planning.
The atmosphere at rehearsals was electric. Every time we sang through a song we were clapping and encouraging one another – especially when ‘Everything’s Easy’ or ‘Best Day Of My Life’ just went right, or we correctly practiced our clapping, stamping and dooting in ‘On Top Of The World’. The hardest part was getting to grips with those songs which had been taught before I joined the choir.
Concert day arrived – Saturday 13 November – a milestone achievement in the Sing! choir calendar. We had reached the date with no further restrictions being imposed on singing. The morning was spent in an anxious and excited state, clock-watching, baking and feeling that there were still lyrics that I knew so well at the Thursday rehearsal which had just disappeared from my mind by Saturday morning!
I arrived promptly at St Barnabas Church at 3.45pm, feeling like there was a marathon to run ahead of me. I remember thinking as warm-up started in the hall – there’s not many of us here! But that soon changed as a nervous excitement filled the room as more choir members arrived and we started to run through the programme of songs. In no time at all, we were ushered into the church building, our auditorium, for sound checks. I was standing on stage thinking ‘Wow, this is what it will really be like!’. Two hours vanished and it was breaktime.
Choir members rushed around to eat, change, set out refreshments and open the doors. The time flew and suddenly it was 7.25pm. With nervous anticipation around whether the auditorium was full or not, our moment had finally arrived. I’ll never forget that feeling as we walked up between 200 chairs of masked guests to the stage. We were almost unable to believe that we were there, searching the crowds through the spotlights for our own guests – and we were off! We started with ‘Some Nights’, the first song l learnt with Sing! on Zoom. This seemed meaningful somehow. Suddenly, we just seemed to relax and enjoyed performing with a fantastic finish to the first half with ‘On Top Of The World’.
Within no time, we were heading back to the stage again after the interval – by now, we knew what to expect and were enjoying the concert as much as the audience. We were encouraged after each song by our fabulous conductors and greeted with a final round of applause from the audience as we finished with our party piece ‘This is Me’ accompanied with sign language actions performed by some clever members. We burst into an encore of … you’ve guessed it, ‘On Top Of The World’. Well, if we had been waiting to smile (as the name of the concert says), that encore certainly did it!
Huge thanks to the entire Sing! committee for the weeks of hard work and preparing us all to deliver a great and long-awaited performance. I don’t think any concert preparation will ever be so hard again, but all that extra effort seemed to make this return to singing for a live audience all the more worthwhile, and certainly more memorable to be involved in. As a concert newbie, I’m looking forward now to encouraging and welcoming other new choir members towards their first concert in the same way that I was encouraged and supported through this as my first concert.
Photos: Graeme Leese
By Bethany Kirby
12th March 2020 was the last time we met in person as a choir. On 16th March 2020, we made the necessary decision to postpone our rehearsals indefinitely. It was the most bizarre couple of weeks, when schools shut, we all ‘locked down’ for the first time and everyone’s lives turned on their heads. With choir, as with all aspects of our lives, we had no idea what to expect in the coming weeks and months.
A year on and we are still yet to meet again in person. The ‘year on’ marker has drawn me to reflect on this most unexpected time for us as a choir. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a sadness at the opportunities missed – not only two concerts and our annual weekend away, but the weekly joy of meeting together to sing, hearing the harmonies coming together, sharing tea and cake at the break, and feeling the buzz in the room after a song well sung.
But I hope I’m also not alone in feeling a huge sense of pride in what we have managed to achieve. We’ve got our heads around Zoom (more or less!) and are regularly getting 40 or more of us together online each Thursday evening. We’ve had 22 online rehearsals to date and have learnt a whole range of new songs…who knows whether we’re all singing quite the same notes, but we’re certainly trying our best! I remember, when planning as a music team for our early Zoom rehearsals, that we sometimes worried about having enough content to fill a 1-hour rehearsal (even with a pause at 8pm when we all dashed outside to “clap for carers”!). Now, we’ve extended our rehearsals to 1hr15 and often feel we don’t have enough time for everything we’d like to do!
We’ve had 11 online sing-alongs, some of them themed, giving us time we’ve never had before to revisit lots of our old repertoire and remember many highlights of concerts past. We’ve held 3 online workshops – on vocal technique, choreography and sign language – led by amazing former Sing! members who we’ve invited back to share their skills with us. We’ve created 5 virtual choir videos, with everyone recording separately at home and sharing their enthusiastic, heartfelt and often ‘unique’ takes to be pieced together! The first of these now has well over 2,000 views on YouTube (fun fact: this makes it our 9th most popular YouTube video; the most popular by far – somewhat surprisingly to me! – is a simple but cheery version of Barbara Ann which we sang in 2015, with almost 14,000 views!).
We put on an online Christmas cabaret evening, where choir members shared a whole range of creative talents, making us laugh and cry in equal measure. We’ve had 7 online socials, craft evenings and quizzes, as well as going to the ‘virtual pub’ every week after rehearsals. In the early days, these pub trips yielded some unique group artwork too, thanks to the Zoom whiteboard! In the first lockdown, we also launched ‘Sing! Does Desert Island Discs’ on Facebook and enjoyed seeing a post from a different choir member each day, sharing one of their favourite songs and why it’s important to them. You can revisit all the posts here if you’re part of our Facebook group (there are some fabulous stories and memories!) and listen to a playlist of many of the songs here.
Meeting online has one obvious benefit – “there’s no commute to Zoom choir!” We’ve seen old Sing! members who’ve moved away from Cambridge pop in to join us (the furthest all the way from America!); we’ve had current members logging in from Italy, Scotland, Yorkshire, Cornwall; and we’ve had several adorable babies stealing the show as their mums grab the chance to take part! We’ve also welcomed brand new members to the choir and can’t wait til we can actually meet you all in person too!
Although the pandemic has often felt like a time of deprivation, and there’s no doubt that singing on Zoom is not the same as singing in-person, I think this experience has in many ways strengthened our sense of community. I’ve chatted to people I’ve not spoken to before in pub breakout rooms. Every rehearsal is accompanied by a lively chat thread where we can share observations and comments that we might not say out loud if we were rehearsing together. And, hopefully, we’ve even learnt lots more names, thanks to that handy little box at the bottom of each square! To those members who haven’t been able to join us on Zoom – we haven’t forgotten you; we love to see you commenting on our videos or popping up on Facebook and we can’t wait until the time is right for you to sing with us again too.
So many people have stepped up in different ways to help make this year of Sing! possible – song leaders, part-teachers, warm-up volunteers, video editors, quiz-makers, Zoom hosters…you are all brilliant! In particular, I’d like to say a special thank you to my fellow music team members – Naomi, Jane and Diana. Rarely do a couple of days go by without us exchanging thoughts, plans and ideas for Sing! Taking choir online has been a real challenge, and a lot of often unseen work goes into delivering a session each week, plus all the other bits around it, and trying to keep things fresh and fun. You are stars!
So here’s to the next year, whatever it may bring – Sing! will be here, and I hope our shared community, friendship, joy and song will see us all through it together 💗
