Allsorts of songs

Have you ever been asked ‘what kind of music do you like’?  You probably had no trouble with it but I was never sure how best to answer such a seemingly simple question.  If I’d been into punk or folk or been a rock chic it would have been ok but having such a wide range of music likes I couldn’t find the words to describe it.   Who would have thought I’d be faced with a similar dilemma when people making enquiries about joining our choir ask me ‘what kind of things do you sing’....hhmmm, good question.  It’s obvious really that people want to know before committing themselves what kind of songs we sing so why do I struggle so much with it.  It might be witty, given our name, to say we sing allsorts of songs but not really very helpful so I usually end up just giving them a list of our repertoire.

So what will we be singing in the new year given that our Christmas music has been sorted and stored away for next year (well it will be when I get round to doing it).  We have a lovely Gershwin Medley arranged for us by David Gilson which includes I Got Rhythm, ‘SWonderful, Nice Work If You Can Get It, They Can’t Take That Away From Me, Embraceable You and Shall We Dance which I can’t wait to get started on.  Another one David arranged for us is the Minstrel Medley which we all like and plan to keep on singing. Elaine our MD brought us You Raise Me Up which was sidelined due to needing to rehearse for our Christmas performances so that is another to get to grips with.  We started singing A Small Part of the World a few weeks back which we all immediately fell in love with and we will keep working on that.  Then of course we plan to revisit some of our favourites from our varied repertoire, one of our singers heaven help us even suggested we resurrect When The Saints Go Marching In which should be fun or maybe not. We never really mastered that one even though Becki took us through it over and over again.  When we got it right it was lovely but we mostly got it wrong and we lost heart and gave up on it when Becki was no longer there to prod us on.  So watch this space, it will be interesting to see whether we manage to crack it second time around.

Turkey, turkey and more turkey!

It's been a quiet Christmas for me this year, my daughter and grandson have been away and our Christmas Day lunch was a very nice steak in red wine sauce and jacket spud.  I've had plenty of turkey though and three Christmas lunches in one week so I don't feel deprived.  I mentioned in my last post that we had sung to the Pontefract and Ackworth Almshouse Charity residents and I was lucky enough to be invited to stay on and join in with their meal. Then a couple of days later the Liquorice Singers, well 13 of us, met and had a Christmas lunch and I tried to order pork for a change but they had run out so it was turkey again.  A couple of days after that I attended a celebratory meal which had been booked for months and guess what I had ordered.  So not being a great lover of turkey I couldn't face it on the day itself hence the nice steak. 

It was the first time the singers had arranged a meal out and we had a lovely time and will certainly do it again next year.  

It was special for me too as they presented me with a lovely bouquet as a thank you for keeping the choir going.

Waving or drowning? No she's conducting the choir.....

Should a person with no musical knowledge be conducting a choir?  Probably not, but no one is complaining (yet) and I have been watching from the other side of the fence since 1993 when I joined my first choir, well a barbershop chorus to be precise, so I must have picked up a few tricks even if subconsciously along the way.  Anyway the choir like someone out front to keep time etc and if I am honest I love the chance to do it and besides which there's no one else.  So that's why you find me out there waving my arms around pretending I know what I'm doing and wondering if my bum looks big, no not really, I know my bum looks big.  

We have sung in two performances this month, one to residents of a local residential care home and the other to residents of the Almshouses and had a lovely time.  I hope that our Christmas repertoire helped get our audience into the Christmas spirit especially as we had been practicing the songs since the beginning of September and have been in and out of the Christmas spirit (mostly out) a few times ourselves.  Although I have enjoyed our festive singing I will be very happy to sing something else when we restart rehearsals in the new year.

What's in a name.......

You might wonder, and people do, why we are called the Liquorice Singers. Our founder had always wanted a choir of that name. Well we are based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire which is the home of liquorice, it being first introduced into the town by the monks after the Norman Conquest and liquorice is also reputedly good for the vocal chords and delicious to eat especially on a home made cake.

Mince pies and cake at our last rehearsal of the year.