A few days ago I went to a meeting. Technically it could have been described as a choir committee meeting. However, fear not – I haven’t been abducted by aliens. As you would expect the meeting involved me and two lovely ladies having coffee together. I did try to order cake but that seemed to be beyond the capabilities of the venue we had met at. The main purpose of said meeting was to decide on a venue for the Pewsey Belles‘ Christmas Dinner – which this year will be at the Marlborough Golf Club. Despite their inability to supply cake, the dining room did seem quite nice and there was much talk of good quality food.
It always amuses me that Choir Christmas Dinners seem to be the best attended events of the year; often it is the only event where you will find every single choir member in the same room at the same time! I don’t think this is a bad thing – choirs are ultimately social organisations. For example this Sunday my Female A Cappella Group, The BlueBelles, are singing at the Bristol Festival of song. I was very excited at the opportunity to perform on stage at St George’s Bristol but since we are singing from 2.00pm – 2.25pm I thought it would be nice to go somewhere afterwards for a stylish afternoon tea! This certainly got the attention of the rest of the BlueBelles who instantly decided this was an event worth going to! More amusingly, one of the BlueBelles later emailed me to apologise for not being able to make the gig, but actually seemed more upset about missing out on afternoon tea rather than singing at St George’s!
By contrast, my Male Voice Choir don’t ever seem to go out for dinner – they do the manly thing of going to the pub and drinking beer after choir rehearsals. Although this only seems to happen once a month, which I assume is because they have to get permission from their wives! They do, however, have an annual golf day which I guess includes food at some point. I should probably attend this event one year, except I haven’t yet figured out which end of the golf bat to blow into. Hopefully I can just turn up for the food!
This week I will be holding an open rehearsal for Great Western Harmony in order to recruit more choristers. I’m rather hoping to attract people because they want to come along and enjoy singing in the choir and being part of our events throughout the year. Just in case that isn’t enough of an incentive, there will also be cake. This is usually a sure-fire way of attracting people to anything!
So in summary, being in a choir is sometimes about singing, and sometimes it’s about cake. But it should always be about having fun.
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Jules Addison is Musical Director for The BlueBelles, The Pewsey Belles, Cirencester Male Voice Choir & Great Western Harmony