Various family members were involved in this and I found myself dashing all over town to keep up.
It began by watching, and then following, my son in the procession of children carrying their artwork on a ‘sea’ theme down from the Assembly Rooms to the Abbey (negotiating a bottleneck where an electricity company had opportunely almost severed the route by digging right across it).
Then into the Abbey where other performers were waiting, including my daughter in her school’s ensemble, ready to perform Underneath by Stephen Hiscock. My daughter’s section was called ‘The Prawn’. She’d had a busy week, as the previous night she was in Bath’s Forum singing in the Bath Primary Schools Arts Festival (I couldn’t be there, so I can’t give a write-up of that).
Dashed home to change into concert gear, and back for a quick warm-up before the Chandos Singers did a slot in the Friends’ Meeting House. This was a showcase for a sample of the choir’s repertoire: Latin American baroque, an excerpt from the mediæval Mass in our last concert, and some Scandinavian/Baltic pieces which were new to me (such as Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s setting of Double, double, toil and trouble, which turns up again later in the Festival, and In Deo salutare meum by Erki Meister).
Then we trooped across town to have a rehearsal as usual, and afterwards I returned to the Pump Room to hear the Paragon Singers in the final slot. This wound the evening down nicely. I hadn’t heard the choir for a few years and noticed some changes in the front row (my own place in the waiting list for auditions must have lapsed a while back). I’m afraid I can’t now remember all their programme (it had been a long evening), but it included Draw on, sweet night in competition with the closing firework display going on outside (at least I was sat in a position where I could see as well as hear the latter) They ended with two pieces by Britten: a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins from around the time of A boy was born, new to me, and Oliver Cromwell, which I used to sing as a party piece with the John Powell Singers.