Selling tickets wasn't the problem - it was holding back the hordes! Tickets
for families and friends sold before we'd even got the posters up, and after
the Surrey Hills Chamber Choir win in the adult category of the Choir of the
Year Competition, choral music fans from much further afield were clamouring
for tickets. Nearly all the Surrey Hills choirs have expanded, so more
friends and family needed to be provided for, and added to the portfolio is
the new Glebelands in Harmony school choir, which was invited to join the
Singing School for our Christmas entertainment. The original Cranleigh
Baptist Church venue for our joint Christmas concert proved too small. What
to do? Turn music lovers away or change venue? After some frantic pondering,
Mrs Hutchinson, the headmistress of Glebelands School, suggested we hold the
concert in the school hall. With choirs standing in the foyer until it was
their turn to sing, we just managed to accommodate our enthusiastic
Christmas audience.
Mike Winterbotham, with his splendid ability to project his bass-baritone
voice, was roped in as Concert Manager to ensure our morning rehearsal went
smoothly and choirs were well-drilled in efficiently getting on and off the
stage. In the evening, whilst choirs got into position, Simon Jones filled
in the gaps with brilliant repartee.
The choirs, numbering some 70 singers in all, only just managed to squeeze
onto the stage for the joint opening songs for each half: Adele's 'Rolling
in the deep' and the fun 'Christmastime' by Michael Smith and Joanna
Carlson.
Surrey Hills Young Voices opened the concert, the highlight of its programme
being 'Ride of the witch' by Charles Wood. The song is written as a canon
and is challenging to sing, particularly for such a small - fifteen-strong -
choir.
The adorable Surrey Hills Training Choir - a group of five pre-schoolers -
stole our hearts with 'I once saw and elephant', a memory song in which more
and more animals and their sounds get added to the list of things seen. The
Training Choir stood on the stage and held their nerve whilst conductor
Debbie Walton rushed out of the concert hall in the midst of a coughing fit,
singing with full confidence after a three-minute unplanned interval!
Snuffles threatened to floor the Surrey Hills Singers, a daytime group of
nine women singers. I stepped in at the last minute to sing a part (with
score!) after one of their number lost her voice. Jennifer Ward was
magnificent as the soloist in the spiritual 'Ride the chariot'. The singers
also sang a moving rendition of 'The ships of Arcady' by Michael Head.
Surrey Hills Chamber Choir put together a programme that included songs from
its recent triumph in the Choir of the Year Competition, including 'Rytmus'
by Ivan Hrusovsky, 'Sounding sea' by Eric William Barnum, 'Double, double,
toil and trouble' by Jaakko Mantyjarvi, and 'My soul's been anchored in the
lord' by Moses Hogan, a spiritual which we never seem to get tired of
singing and which suits our celebratory mood and the homophonic style in
which we excel.
In the second half the audience was introduced to Glebelands in Harmony for
the first time. This group of fourteen secondary school-aged young people
has been performing for one school year so far. It was unanimously agreed
that the standard they have reached in such a short space of time is
staggering. They sang a gentle song, 'All on a silent night' by Becki Slagle
Mayo, which incorporates the traditional tune of 'Silent night' as a
counterpart to the melody. Sarah Winterbotham played a sonorous cello
accompaniment.
It would be too numerous to mention all the songs sung for this special
Christmas concert. I hope you've had a taster here. The Surrey Hills Singing
School Christmas concert has become a traditional outing for a great many
people in the Cranleigh area. And the feast that follows is an integral part
of this special evening. But what makes this concert particularly special is
in fact the carols that intersperse the set pieces. With harmonies and
descants sung with ease by these able singers the audience particularly
seems to enjoy participating without inhibition, and for many the support
the choirs can give them vocally has rekindled a love of joyous
carol-singing. It is our gift to Cranleigh.
