What I am singing these days!

I belong to a choir. I might have mentioned this before. It's a community choir (no auditions) and sing anything from pop to folk and world. Yesterday was rehearsal day. We are working towards our end of term concert as well as a few Christmas appearances for charity. So we are learning two carols - In The Bleak Mid Winter and Quem Pastores Laudavere (close to the John Rutter arrangement). I do rather like singing in Latin, or in fact German. I find them easier than French.

We shall have one major rehearsal just singing Christmas carols before we do our spots at Waterloo Station and around Kingston in December.

Our end of term concert is also for charity. We will sing in the cafe of The Rose Theatre, Kingston, but this concert isn't just about Christmas as we will sing other things too.Our MD has done a wonderful arrangement of the Killer's Human. We sing it slower than the Killer's and our version has four parts. It makes for a very complex song and yesterday we managed to sing through the whole piece which was an achievement! We don't as yet have the final list of song we shall sing at the concert but they will include Queen's You're My Best Friend, Do You Hear the People Sing (from Les Miserables), Inchworm and a couple of songs from our last concert - Here Comes the Sun (Beatles) and Never Enough.(from The Greatest Showman). Oh and we will have a band!

I have been part of this choir for ten years, almost from its beginning. We have come a long way in those years. Everything is learned by rote, so no music required. We have lyrics for most songs but I do my best to learn them off by heart so I can really enjoy myself on concert day. Being part of the choir has given more confidence. I've always loved to sing. It makes me happy, and I love performing too.

Poetry and Music at The Ram Jam Club

LiTTLe MACHiNe

Last night I went for a walk through poetry from Homer to Carol Ann Duffy care of the group LiTTLe MACHiNe at Rhythm& Muse at The Ram Jam Club in Kingston. The group, who set poetry to music, performed their show Epic in two sets.  We skipped through 3,000 years of poetry history in sixty minutes which included drama and comedy! Some highlights – an extract from Gilgamesh and Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and the war poets (Seigfried Sasson and Wilfred Owen). They were brilliant performers, both in musicianship and personality.

The group tour around the country (do check out their website) the visual backdrop to their show includes pictures of the poets and the words to the poems.

Rachel Rose Reid

The evening was part of Kingston Connections Festival of Stories and included two poets from the floor as well as Rachel Rose Reid who is writer-in-residence at the Charles Dickens Museum in London   Rachel has performed stories and songs for Billy Bragg, Southbank Centre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Last night she told stories from Africa, about Woody Guthrie and about London and Charles Dickens, somehow managing to slide between the old and new worlds. She has a lovely voice and recites her poetry and stories from memory. Rachel keeps you listening (and sometimes participating) because you did not want to miss a word. The stories were funny and poignant and she is an excellent performer, knowing how to instantly engage her audience.

The evening was brilliant – a combination of poetry, stories and music that stay with you on your way home.

(The Ram Jam Club is an intimate setting behind The Grey Horse Pub in Kingston.  Comfy seating, a glass of something from the bar and there you are, up personal with the performers – just how I like it.)