So long to 2008 ...

Well - the hours are ticking away to the end of what has been quite a year for this bunch of people from in and around Belfast!

We've put on concerts, won at festivals north and south of the border and taken wee trips to Liverpool and the big smoke of London and finished it all off nicely in a cathedral on a hill in the County Down ...

BUT!we can't rest on our laurels. 'Onwards and upwards' seems to have become one of my little tag lines, and it seems even more apt in this situation. We've raised the bar, so 2009 is going to be interesting and even more hard work, but that's why we spend our Monday evenings from September to June just off the Castlereagh Road - because we enjoy singing!

See you all next year - all except however, for the other dodgy first tenor, as yet another one has been drawn to the scottish highlands - what is it with the water over there? (... or maybe it's those hops they add to it!) All the best Paddy!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

DT

Happy Christmas (Carol Service is Over)

Ah ... it can feel like Christmas now - the last refrain of Hark The Herald has reverberated around the Down Cathedral naive and the traditional post-service christmas chinese has been digested (just about!)

Well we managed to skirt around most of the colds and flu bugs for the 15th annual service - if you're still to sing anymore yourself before Christmas - good luck and sing out - it really is the most wonderful time of the year! (for singing anyway) Hope all that Christmas shopping is done!

Thanks for reading the blog this year - it's been something new - ramblings most of it, but hey...

Merry Christmas one and all from me and i'm sure i can say, the rest of Grosvenor!

We came, we saw ... we almost conquered!

Talking on the bus on the way back towards Gatwick last night, some of the choir wanted me to title this blog "We woz Robbed!" but i guess that wouldn't really be fair to the winners (... or would it?)

No, but seriously - each of the seven choirs who made it to the Grand Finals deserved to be there. There were so many great and diverse performances - i wouldn't have wanted to be a judge - how do you compare and indeed choose between barbershop, children's choirs, youth choirs, early music, modern music ????

But then again - they had long enough to do it as the rest of us had to sit through green eggs and ham ... (and no, that's not a comment on the Southbank centre's catering outlets either - you had to be there ... all we'll say is BRING BACK THE CRAMPER! Those is the know will know what i mean!)

The best thing to come out of last night's competition however were the comments from the judges after our performance - glowing tributes to Ed's hard work and glowing tributes to the work of the choir and in terms of the bigger picture, comments that said we brought out a warmth in our singing that represented the warmth of the people from Northern Ireland.

The judges did say that there was just a point between the top two choirs - i wonder if we'll ever find out that runner up name ...?

Here we go ...

Well, the time of waiting is almost over!

While the advance party are shopping their way around the capital as i type, the rest of us are (of course) checking over our music and making sure we know every note... (no, honestly ... or maybe, like in my case, wrestling that Christmas tree into position for decorating before getting the flight tomorrow morning!)

Hasn't it all been fun though? I think so. There's been lots of press coverage from local newspapers and radio, and we had the guys over from BBC Wales filming for the 'meet-the-choir' segment which will go out on the televised highlights of the Grand Final on BBC 4 on Friday 12th December at 7.30pm!

So it's all good, if a little tiring - there's still the small matter of our fundraising night in S.D. Bell's next week, then carol singing in Castlecourt and our Annual Festival of Nine Lessons with Carols in Down Cathedral on Friday 19th (...and whatever else we get roped into along the way!)

Anyway, wish us luck - and i'll be back to report on Monday!

DT

We are the choir who say CHREE!

... we have however managed to avoid such other words as 'Peng' and 'Neee-wom' as they tend not to lend themselves to neither Christmas nor competition choral pieces - hard to believe i know, but shrubbery should be kept to hand, none the less!

For those of you who are absolutely lost, the above has a little to do with diction and pronunciation ... and maybe a little to do with Monty Python ... but just a little...

Back to rehearsals tonight after a week off - only two official rehearsals to go! The committee has spent a knight round a table to the wee small hours and flight and hotel bookings have commenced, as does the fundraising!

Prior to the full onslaught of Grosvenor on London, the director and myself took it upon ourselves to conduct a reccie of the Royal Festival Hall and surrounding area on London's South Bank at the weekend and can therefore now tell you with no word of a lie that it's BIG! Therein concludes our findings.

Time ticks on (... but we're not dead yet!)

N.b. ...the fact that we ventured towards the west end and may have seen a show at the Palace Theatre may have possibly influenced some of these ramblings tonight ... possibly ... normal service will resume shortly ...

.. and the night after ...

I ended my last entry "... now - onto the next one ..."

No sooner do i upload and then i find out that the judges have only gone and nominated us to go through to the Grand Final in London next month!!!

I think i'm too tired to be emotional now at this point...

Fantastic!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ... !

The day after ...

What a weekend!

Arriving in Liverpool and finding out that the arranger of one of your competition pieces is going to be judging you ... (erk) well, it made it interesting i guess, but Mr Goodall seemed to like our interpretation at the end of the day!

Saturday was indeed a long day - rehearsals, soundchecks, Quickchef, rehearsals, Quickchef, rehearsals, Philharmonic - performance, work-shopping (while GC nips to the bar...), results, Philharmonic (bar this time ...)anchor, pizza ... bumper ....

It was a long wait til we got on that stage - even throwing in a 20 minute interval to add to the agony, but the performance ...

That performance is one thing that i'll remember for a long, long time. For eight minutes, we had the ears of the entire audience of Philharmonic Hall and the ears of four highly respected judges ... and for me, to a point, at the end of those eight minutes, i didn't really care what the judges were going to say - all i knew, was that i had just taken part in something very, very special.

It's hard sometimes, not to get carried away with the emotion of the moment, but the crowd's reaction and the feeling of acheivement while smiling and looking round at your fellow grosvenorites was something to savour and take in - indeed for some, last night was their first ever performance with the choir, but you wouldn't have known it.

To all who were involved in that performance ... thank you.

Now - onto the next one!

DT

Choir of the Year ...

It's here ... crikey!

Back in June it was ok ... it's months away, sure ...

Ah well, this coming Saturday morning and we board the flight for Liverpool under the guidance of our spanish correspondant and hoping that the piano tuner has booked enough rooms!

How stressful do you reckon 8 minutes of performance can be? I'll tell you - quite a bit! But, in fairness to all - there's been a lot of work done already and perhaps, still a bit to do individually if we're all honest ... yes, even a dodgy tenor like me, and thanks must go to the MD (ed) for all the hard work so far, and for the rest that's still to come in next week...

So fingers crossed ...

On Eagle's Wing

As i type, the curtain is about to rise at the Grand Opera House for the show's second run here in Belfast.

Grosvenor Chorale were lucky enough to be involved in this production, recording demo and choral backing tracks, and sang onstage when the original shows played to sell out audiences at Belfast's Odyssey Arena back in 2004.

And as he's been such a great supporter of Grosvenor, we especially wish the show's writer and composer John Anderson, all the best for the coming weeks as the tour begins!

We're losing them already ...

Three weeks in and we've lost two already!!!

Nope, it's not quite that bad, but two of the men, er boys (...well, barely out of nappies really) are off to start and continue university careers.

Mark's off to Granada in northern spain to teach English, but then again, my memories of language assistants in school didn't see them actually do much work :) I'm jealous though - it's 31 degrees at the moment according to google weather, but i'm reliably informed by our spanish correspondant in the soprano section, that it can get suitably cold in the winter there too!

And Ashton's off to work on his golf at St Andrews - another nice cold and windy place too. Just wait and see - our Indian Summer is still just around the corner here in sunny N'orn Ireland - they'll soon be wanting back.

Best of luck guys and keep looking at that music for Liverpool!

p.s. if any south american correspondants see Paddy wandering around, tell him to get back here to the tenor section asap ...

We're back !!!

Enough of other choirs - Grosvenor is back!!

The weeks are starting to tick down towards Liverpool. Great to see such a good turnout tonight and a few new faces too ...

So just two question remains - just what shade of purple do Cadbury's use? and just what will clothes shop staff be thinking when they see people walking in carrying Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut bars???


Hhhmmmm ... ...

"Last Choir ... - how about "Strictly Choral Singing" on a Saturday night?

The Beeb's 'Last Choir Standing' did pass the Saturday evenings, but it could be hardly called a choir competition, in my humble opinion... i'm just glad our 'MD' didn't send away the entry form!

Don't get me wrong - there were some great choir groups in the last stages, but stick a big backing track, lights and mics on any reasonable choir and you can do wonders. Throw in the choreography that some went for and you've got a great ensemble cast for any stage musical - but as i said - should it still be classed as a choral competition??

You don't get a safety track to fall back on when you're standing in a competition venue and judges' feedback is normally a little more technical and informative than that of the relatively random comments that were being thrown about each week at television centre...!!!

Anyway - i digress - the last choir standing - Only Men Aloud! I thought put on some really entertaining performances and i look forward to hopefully hearing runners-up, Ysgol Glanaethwy when they compete in the Youth Section of BBC 3 Choir of the Year in Liverpool ...

And so we begin ...

Grosvenor Chorale or simply 'Grosvenor' as we know it, is on the eve of it's sixteenth year in existance ... but this is the first blog!

The choir is made of 30 or so folk from a lot of different backgrounds - ranging from engineers, teachers, students, nurses, sales-people, civil servants and if you ever need a new kitchen ... Anyway, as i said - a lot of different people, from teens to 40-somethings - yes, we do have a core of founder members too (so, they must enjoy it, if they still enjoy spending Monday evenings out for ten months of the year!) Not the usual bunch of faces that you see might see singing in a number of choirs and not just a collection of trained voices either...

This is a group of (largely!) down-to-earth people who work hard under the direction of our Director (or MD, as seems to be the buzz-title of the Beeb's choir competition, Last Choir Standing!) Edward Craig, based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

We always have a busy itinery for the year from concerts to broadcasts, but you can check out more about that on the website http://www.grosvenorchorale.com/ - recitals, carol services, competitions ...

And the new year ahead has just got busier as we found out in the past month that we've crossed into new territory - securing a place in the BBC Radio 3 (Adult) Choir of the Year Final in Liverpool later in the year! Now that's a challenge, but it should be fun in the process ...!