Photos by Colleen Gauntlett. Left click on the images to enlarge
As part of its ongoing charity fund raising efforts, the Choir was more than delighted to offer an Open Evening to a brave, little 4 year old girl from Caldicot. Annalese Gosling is suffering from the rare, cruel and currently incurable disease known as FOP (Fibrodysplasia Ossifans Progressiva). This means that her body is creating a second skeleton which will finally encase her and cripple her for the rest of her life.
The Choir has an open door policy at any practice night but every so often we publicise this and invite a local charity, with their supporters and other members of the public to come along, free of charge to listen to us practice and sing a few popular numbers. So far we have helped the Seren Appeal raise well over £500 to help the neo-natal unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital, The Victims of Chernobyl Children’s Trust again raised over £500 on a Open Evening; another contributed about £160 to Prostate Cymru as part of our on-going campaign for this charity and finally last night’s event helped raise over an amazing £600 for Annalese’s appeal to help the Friends of Oliver find a cure for this dreadful disease.
About 64 choristers came to practice last night to support Annalese together with Musical Director Siân Hatton, Assistant Musical Director Shirley Ann James and Accompanists John Nicholson and Stephen Berry. It’s worth recording the songs sung on the evening as a demonstration of the Choir’s versatility in its repertoire. The choir opened with its new piece Nirvana to demostrate how a complex piece of four part harmony is put together and when the four parts do harmonise it’s an amazing sound. The audience was then treated to an eclectic mix of classical Welsh Hymns, Llanfair and Laudamus, Elvis Presley’s Maybe I didn’t Love You, Can you Hear the People Sing and Bring HIm Home from Les Miserables, Can you Feel the Love Tonight from Elton John’s The Lion King in which Siân Hatton’s amazing soprano voice was the solo part; You Raise me up, made famous by West Life and many others through to spiritual Ride the Chariot in which the soloists were David Gould and Siân Hatton. The evening would not have been complete without a rendering of Tom Jones’ Delilah! Arguably the third Welsh National anthem!
About 50 supporters turned up and we would have liked to have seen a few more but nevertheless, Annalese endeared herself so much that many were moved to tears (they won’t admit it though) and it is worth mentioning that local Caldicot Builder and bass chorister, Ron Powell made a singular contribution of £200. Well done Ron, for your generous gift to help this brave little girl’s appeal.
If you would like to contribute more to Annalese’s appeal please visit her Giving website by clicking on the link Annalese. Doing this will also qualify your donation for Gift Aid adding another 25% to the donation if you are a tax payer.
The Choir is always willing to consider helping a deserving local or National charity by giving a concert, usually free of charge (except transport costs) and if you would like us to help you in this way, please contact us through this website and we will do all we can to help. Over the years the choir has raised many hundreds of thousands of pounds for deserving causes.