Various family members were involved in this and I found myself dashing all over town to keep up.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
Then into the Abbey where other performers were waiting, including my daughter in her school’s ensemble, ready to perform Underneath<\/i> 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).<\/p>\n
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<\/i>, which turns up again later in the Festival, and In Deo salutare meum<\/i> by Erki Meister).<\/p>\n
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<\/i> 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<\/i>, new to me, and Oliver Cromwell<\/i>, which I used to sing as a party piece with the John Powell Singers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading