Many thanks to those who sang at Geoffrey Bond’s lecture on 17th November. Apologies that it was not as warm as I led you to believe. The singing was very good – intonation and diction were much improved. I think that it was a good thing to do; it was the largest audience that we have sung to for many a year. Hopefully, some of them will come to our Christmas Concert.

Geoffrey sent the following the day after:

Dear Nick,just  to  say I enjoyed listening to the Newstead Singers ,a rare event to hear poems of Byron set to music, please thank the Choir for their very good performance, best regards Geoffrey.

Slightly different routine this week:

7:45-8:30 with me on the following repertoire:

8:30 – 9:15 with Ben Bar-Lev on the following:

9:15 Refreshments and fellowship

We then have two more Friday rehearsals – 6th and 13th December before the Concert on 14th December. On 14th December we will rehearse at 2 pm for as long as necessary (hopefully not after 4:30) with the Concert at 7 pm. please do your best to sell tickets.

Arrangements for Saturday, 5th October:

2:30 Meet at Calverton Village Hall – there is another event on until 2:30 so no point in arriving early.

Address: William Lee Memorial Park, Park Rd, Calverton, Nottingham NG14 6SA

2:30 Set up stands etc.

2:45 Rehearse items with clarinets

3:00 Doors open

3:15 Concert. No interval; refreshments at the end.

Dress: Ladies all black; gentlemen DJs, black bow tie.

One sheet programme (for use in folder?)

Audience programme (if you prefer!)

Tickets: £5 from Mary on Friday night or on the door.

We are singing four items with the clarinets: Summertime, Moon River, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and Putting on the Ritz. I will bring words on Friday. You can use the links to refresh the tunes.

Where has the Summer gone? Has it ever arrived? Whatever it has done in your life I hope that it has been enjoyable and that you have had a good break.

I am looking forward to the new season. Our first meeting is on 6th September. A reminder that we have performances on 5th October, 17th November and 14th December. For those who need all the dates they can be found here. I will be sending availability Muzodo sometime soon.

The programme for 5th October will be very similar to Patchings and on 17th November we will be singing the six Byron settings that we have been rehearsing.

Through September and October we will also be looking forward to 14th December. I am currently beginning to work out a programme for that. Last year I overextended us by putting in too many unfamiliar pieces and it was probably three pieces too long. Now is the time for you to help mould that programme so that both the audience and us have a more enjoyable experience. Please send me your recommendations by the end of next week.

Enjoy the rest of the month and I’ll see you on 6th September or shortly after.

Thanks a lot for your hard work last week; the singing was very good, especially towards the end of the the rehearsal. We meet again this week.

Below is the music list; it includes one or two pieces that we haven’t done recently but everyone (except those who have joined this year) should have the music. I will bring those spares that I have.

ESM 75 Os justi
Sheet Be thou my vision
Sheet This is my Father’s World
Sheet I sowed the seeds of love
Sheet Swansea Town
Sheet Give us this day
Sheet The Rose arr. NT

Here is the repertoire for the rest of the Summer from which any performance programme will be selected. I will check on Friday to make sure that everyone has all the music.

Your committee met on Tuesday evening to plan the way forward: there will be feedback on Friday.

We are still waiting final confirmation of one or two dates but reminder of what you should have pencilled in your diary:

Concert on either 1st or 8th June possibly with Sherwood Clarinets, hopefully we’ll be able to confirm one way or the other this week.

Patchings Art Festival on 12th July during the day. Last year it was at 11:00.

The proposed date for the Christmas Concert is Saturday, 14th December. Committee decided to try Woodborough Church again, involving another organisation to provide refreshments and entice more local audience.

We’ve received a generous boost to our finances which will be announced on Friday. The amount will be ring fenced and used for a specific purpose that we will collectively decide.

The sun is shining as I write but it isn’t heating anything up!

Thank you for your hard work last time out. We only did half of the music that I had planned but it was mostly new or not done for a long time.

Here is the music list for 9th February:

There is a lot of choir music spread about in people’s music cases, on pianos, propping up table legs and under piles of paper. We want to retrieve music that we are unlikely to use in the foreseeable future.

Mary has compiled a list of what we think is out. (click here)

It is in two columns. The left hand column is music that we would like you to hand in please, either 9th or 16th February. The right hand column is music to be retained (newer members will receive anything that they haven’t got as and when it is needed). There is even a handy tick column to help you keep track.

Thanks for filling in the summer availablity. 1st and 8th June are the only dates that everyone is available at this stage so please try and keep them clear. We’ll let you know as soon as anything is planned.

We are hoping to arrange a concert in the Summer.

Thanks.

Happy New Year. I hope that you are looking forward to meeting at 7:45 on Friday.

Bring all your Christmas music to hand in please.

You will need Madrigals and Part Songs and European Sacred Music for the rehearsal; there will be several pieces to pick up.

Thank you all for your efforts towards the Christmas Concert. We all coped admirably with a new venue, lots of new music (apologies for putting a bit too much of that in) and various other health and logistic obstacles. In the end we had a reasonable, appreciative audience; it would have been nice to have had a few more. I did receive lots of nice comments at the end, especially from new people. Your committee will review it in detail in due course; please give your comments to Mary, Cathy, Vicky or Lucy.

You should have received the rehearsal dates up to July; there have been no major problems reported so there are no alterations at this stage. The list can be found on the website.

The repertoire for this year commemorates 200 years since the death of Byron and significant anniversaries of Stanford, Holst, Roberton, Bruckner and Wilbye; most of it will be familiar to the long serving. Here is the provisional list that we will be attempting:

A very productive session last week. Thank you for your hard work. There are some notes below. Can we please meet at 7:30 again this Firday?

This Friday we will be down in numbers so will be an opportunity to address less familiar moments. My list is as follows, if anyone has anything to add please let me know and I’ll try to accomodate.

Looking forward to next week:

Friday, 15th December: 7:30 rehearsal in the church. Bring stands, which can be left at church overnight.

Saturday, 16th December: 2:00 – 4:30 rehearsal with Ensemble in the church. There is a comfortable room in the church with toilet and warm drink making facilities that we can use between rehearsal and concert.

7:00 CONCERT

Please do your best to sell tickets – we’ve all worked hard to get this concert on; we want a good audience.

Here are the notes on last week’s pieces:

Thank you all for a good rehearsal last week; the extra quarter of hour made a big difference.

After the information about this week’s rehearsal there are some notes on the pieces that we did last week to bear in mind when we next sing them.

This week we will start with Masters in this hall from the first half (which we didn’t do last week) then concentrate on the second half. I anticipate having to spend time on the Will Todd pieces; the rest of the second half is famiiar to most of you so, hopefully, will be plain sailing. Here is the music list – we will work through in this order:

Notes on last week’s pieces:

The main thing is get familiar with the foreign words; otherwise I was greatly encoraged  by all the pieces. Well done.

Looking forward to our rehearsal on Friday. The concert is getting quite close now; I hope that you are managing to find a few minutes to look at the music that might be unfamiliar to you. The main things to look at for Friday are:

The German texts

Mary did you know (I will be bringing a fresh copy for you all with one or two minor rhythmic adjustments)

Masters in this Hall

On Friday we will work on the first half in order:

I will confirm the audience carols on Friday.

On the programme I have put opportunity for three readings: they need to be selected aong with someone to read them – any volunteers?

We also need volunteers to serve refreshments in the interval (NOT members of the choir) – partners? offspring? friends? – names to Mary please.

Tickets (£10) are now available through the website and at rehearsals

Here is a printable version of Lucy’s excellent poster and there will be some hard copies at rehearsal on Friday.