The Choir is proud to continue its Open Door Policy and at last Thursday’s practice it was particularly pleased to welcome Chepstow and District Welsh Society through its doors. Regrettably many choirs have a limited repertoire of Welsh songs but we are rightly proud to support our Welsh heritage, culture and language by including many famous Welsh pieces in our concert programmes.
Some thirty or more members and supporters of the Welsh Society were treated to a broad example of our favourites traditional hymns, conducted by Siân Hatton, Shirley Ann James, chorister John Evans and accompanied by Stephen Berry, including Llanfair, Rachie, Gwahoddiad and Laudamus together with modern songs such as Yfory and love song Lleucu Llwyd. As a demonstration of our versatility, our Welsh items were followed with presentations of The Lord’s Prayer, American Trilogy, Can You Feel the Love Tonight and Puccini’s Nessun Dorma from the opera Turandot by special request and not forgetting a couple of our Queen numbers, Bohemian Rhapsody and Somebody to Love, with Siân as usual giving a superlative performance as soloist
In this far south eastern corner of Wales, few of the choir are Welsh speakers but all are committed to continuing the best traditions of Wales through it’s choral singing. The evening was a great success in demonstrating this and to quote Helen Morfydd, organiser of the Welsh Society :-
“Without exception, everyone from our Welsh Society sang (!) your praises and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Apart from the great evening’s entertainment it was heartening to see that great Welsh tradition of choral singing is still going strong in our local area. As I said last night, I am mightily impressed that you sang in Welsh without copies and with lots of care and attention not only to the music but also the words; impressive pronunciation!”………….”you have certainly broadened your fan base amongst those of us who could make it and gave us an opportunity to socialise in Welsh in a new environment. So to end, I’ll say that the Amens were amazing and the ‘Arglwydd dyma fi’, my personal favourite, will stay with me a long time.”
We are all pleased that you all enjoyed yourselves and we were particularly thrilled to see ex-accompanist Meurig Jones come to hear us as well.
Photos by James Goodwin. Left click on the images to enlarge
We hope that we can make this a regular event for the future.
Footnote.
As as consequence of the Open evening, Paul Carlson, in the audience on the night came to practice and promptly signed up to join the choir as a 2nd bass. Well done Paul!