Very excited to report that this evening we learnt that one of our group is about to summit Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, after climbing for 6 days to a height of 19,341 feet whilst raising money for St Catherine’s Hospice. We are all so proud of her achievement! You can donate here: https://www.justgiving.com/team/carol-and-tom
Our evening began at a much more sedate pace with a general warm up. Katy told us to concentrate on our constanants as we sang ,apparently it works the voice better - who knew?
Began with “Scarlett Ribbons” and we needed to revise some notes, both Alto and Soprano. It is beginning to sound lovely with a nice blend between the groups as we become more confident. We needed to watch out for the dots as it alters the length of the note - no dots and the notes are equal. Discussion about whether the words in the song should read “till I live to be 100 (or 200)” but leaving it as it is now.
“Winter Song“ next with a very unusual start (bum bum bum….). This is written by the lady who wrote the musical Waitress and it creates a lovely sound, if a little sad. It was suggested that we should listen to the original version and enjoy the performance.
“Christmas for Cowboys” followed, recorded and released by John Denver but not well known to any of us but we are finding it good to learn. This splits the two soprano groups in places so they have to watch the notes and read when they are higher or lower. Fun fitting the words in - especially when they are nonsense and it becomes a real tongue twister. This has already been produced for us on KTB Youtube, so lots of chance for us to practise in the comfort of our own homes during the coming weeks.
“Rudolph“ was our next revision and we really need to “bash this out all the way to page eight tonight!” This is another song that is unknown and it is good to be presented with completely new material. Robbie Williams recording has passed us by. Quite complicated because we are all usually singing something different - it will be interesting to see how it sounds when we manage to put it all together. The audience may think that we have all lost the plot and gone wrong! We each have to closely watch where the other groups are up to. When we were first faced with this it was quite daunting: it is definitely growing on us as we become slowly more proficient. “Give yourselves credit“ says Katy, “we are learning a difficult song and doing very well, this is going to sound stupendous!”
“Christmas Lullaby". Good to listen to the other sections preparing their part as it gives us time to keep rereading the lyrics and try to commit them to memory. It is such a beautiful song and I think we are all enjoying the challenge of learning how this goes.
Finished the evening with “I’ll be home“ and “Mary’s boy child”. Much more confident with this last piece as it is so well known and it showed in the performance. Sure that as the weeks go by we will all see an improvement in our voices.
As it was the final meeting of the month a few of us stopped behind for a drink and a general catch up. Always nice to finish on a social note and catch up with our fellow songbirds.
Written by Maria Baxter