Naked Voices



It's Chippenham Festival this week and in spite of the crazy decision to sell tickets only in Corsham, I trolled over there on Tuesday to buy one to see Naked Voices at the Neeld Hall last night. As you know, I've joined a Community Choir and it just so happens that Chris, our choir maestro is a member of this group. I thought it would be a good idea to see how the professionals do things and what we should be aspiring to.
It was a stunning display of varied voices, music and choreography. I particularly enjoyed the StarFlashThunder medley (Startrek, Flash Gordon and Thunderbirds), especially Chris' role as the Brian Blessed character ('Gordon's alive!') and the superhero posing at the back during the Flash section. Another highlight was the Pearl & Dean music (always a favourite when I go to the cinema), cheekily arranged to form the group's own advertisement for their merchandise. A spooky coincidence was the performance of Leiber & Stoller's Ruby Baby as a colleague of mine gave birth to a little girl called Ruby Eva at 12.15 am yesterday.
I was a little nervous about going on my own, but I needn't have worried as there were plenty of fellow choir members there to chat to during the interval. My seating neighbour, a member of Chippenham's Male Voice Choir, was most impressed: his parting words were 'We've got a whole lot more practising to do to reach that standard!' I also had an ulterior motive in going to the concert as our own choir will be combining with 3 others there to form 'The Wiltshire Wailers' to 'Sing for Water' in aid of WaterAid (also linked on the right of this page) on December 17th. We'll be about 100 voices strong and performing a suitably festive programme of music. The stage looked quite small for that number of people from where I was sitting!
If you would like to join a Community Choir near you, then you must take a look at the Natural Voice Practioners' website. You'll find country and county by county listings, so there's bound to be something available close to where you live. If you want to see Naked Voices for yourself, you'll have to hurry as they're on their farewell tour. The above link to their website will tell you where they're performing between now and next March.

Comments

  1. Zoë10 July 2008 at 13:46

    Glad its going to well - it must be so exciting.

    I had a look at the link you suggested in mail, but sadly found nothing near me; Berks has no choirs listed, and Hants and Surrey choirs are either in London, or on the South coast in Portsmouth or Southampton. Back to the drawing board for me.

    Zoë

    ReplyDelete
  2. VP16 July 2008 at 13:32

    That's a shame Zoe. Fingers crossed you find something.

    ReplyDelete

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