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Festivals |
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Woodley Festival, 2010
On 6th March, the choir participated in the Woodley Festival. We took part in the ladies class and folk class. The choir achieved a highly commended. In the ladies class, we sang, Elgars ‘Torrents in Summer’ and a Rutter favourite, ‘The lord Bless you and keep you’. The choir performed well and was thanked by the adjudicator for performing his favourite Elgar piece. The adjudicator, Hilary Davan-Wetton, said that the choir were ‘well projected and balanced’ in the Elgar piece and with Rutter, ‘good vowel sounds, and ‘well tuned singing with a sense of line’. In the folk class, we did two pieces arranged by our musical director, Nicky. ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’ and ‘I will give my love an Apple’. Some of the adjudicators comments were very encouraging for the choir ‘very atmospheric’, ‘especially good soloists’, ‘an attractive sound’, ‘powerful and enlivening.’ Woodley Festival, 2009 On the 28th February, Bel Canto Chorus, were one of the first adult choirs to enter the Woodley Festival. It was also, the choir’s first competitive outing. They performed in the folk class, ‘ A Bunch of Thyme’ arranged by Michael Neame and ‘Steal away’ which was arranged by Bel Canto Chorus’s musical Director, Nicky Jerrome. They also sang ‘Lift Thyne Eyes’ by Mendelssohn and ‘How Merrily We Live’ by Michael East in the ladies choir section.
The choir were very pleased to achieve highly commended in both classes, the adjudicator, Ian Kennedy, praised the choir for the ‘promising qualities’ they possessed.
Cheltenham Festival of Art and Music, 2009 On May 16th, Bel Canto Chorus participated in the Cheltenham Festival of Art and Music. The standard of the choirs taking part were very high. The choir sang in the sacred class, Rutter’s ‘The Lord Bless you and keep you’ and Mendelssohn’s ‘Lift Thyne Eyes’. They also sang in the open class, a fast moving madrigal ‘How Merrily We Live’ and Elgar’s ‘Torrents In Summer’ . All pieces were sung from memory. They were extremely pleased to achieve two distinctions, and major improvement since February Woodley Festival.
Several fellow performers in other choirs were surprised to learn that Bel Canto Chorus were a relatively new choir as they have only been together for just over a year, and have already achieved such a high standard.
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Female voice choir based in Sonning |
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Bedford Festival—5th March 2011
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On Saturday 5th March, the choir took part in the Bedford Festival of Music and Drama. In the first class, we sang a choir favourite, Mendelssohn ‘Laudate Pueri’ and a new one for the choir, ‘Chorus of the Cigarette Girls’ from the opera Carmen by Bizet. We won the trophy, a silver plate, for this class which we were extremely pleased about as we were up against an impressive mixed choir.
In the second class we performed ‘There is No Rose’ by Britten, again a choir favourite that we performed at our last Christmas concert, which the adjudicator said was technically good and had great dynamics. We also sang an arrangement of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ by our Musical Director, David. This received particular praise from the adjudicator as a ‘very clever close harmony arrangement’ as it was unaccompanied and the voices took the places of the instruments of the original song. We won the ‘Harding Memorial Bowl’ for this class.
Thanks to Nicky Jerrome, our previous director, who came with us as our accompanist.
Our next performance will be on July 16th at the Blue Coat school in Sonning. |