On March 27th Caldicot Male Voice Choir on a freezing night, made the journey to St Paul’s Church in Pontyclun to join in a unique concert with the Cantorion Pontyclun Ladies Choir. The Choirs, together with guest artiste soprano Eve Sophia Carey performed to a full house to raise funds in support of local charities.
Conducted by Fran Hughes and accompanied by Andrea Jenkins, the ladies choir opened proceedings with wonderful presentations of ‘Ave Verum Corpus’, a delightful ‘Amazing Grace’ and finalised its first half performance with ‘Songbird’ originally performed by Fleetwood Mac, written and sung by Christine McVie.
This was followed by a delightful performance of soprano Eve Carey who presented the beautiful, enchanting Welsh song ‘Cilfan y Coed’ by Rhys Jones followed by ‘I could have Danced all Night’ from the musical My Fair Lady.
Caldicot Male Voice Choir, conducted by Shirley Anne James and accompanied by John Nicholson opened with the rousing Welsh Hymn, ‘Rachie’, ‘Only You’ originally performed by The Flying Pickets, the lullaby prayer ‘Y Darlun’, a version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ and finishing with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from the musical Carousel.
The Choir returned to the stage and opened the second half with ‘Cwm Rhondda’ and followed with ‘Days’ written by Ray Davies of the Kinks, the Robert Arwyn’s melodic ‘Benedictus’, ‘Safwn yn y Bwlch’, a song crying for the independence of Wales and finalising with ‘This is the Moment’ from the musical Jeckyll and Hyde.
Eve returned to the stage to perfectly present the classical ‘O Del Amato Ben’ and finalising skilfully with the humorous ‘Vanilla Ice Cream Song’ from the musical She Loves Me.
The penultimate section, performed by the Cantorion Pontyclun Ladies Choir included Bob Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’, a wonderful presentaton of ‘Adiemus’ and finalised with an incredibly difficult but perfectly executed and entertaining performance of ‘Sister Act’ from the 1990’s film starring Whoopi Goldberg.
The incredible concert closed with a joint rendition, conducted by Shirley Anne James of the wishful ‘May You Always have a Song’ and Hen Wlad fy Nhadau’.
Everyone agreed this was an amazing concert, thoroughly enjoyed by all, by two wonderful choirs and a talented soloist in Eve Carey.
The choirs retired to the local Pontyclun Rugby club for a final session of enjoyable ‘Afterglow’ singing, led by Caldicot’s Alyn Dawe. Refreshments in the form of sausage and chips were served up by Wales Rugby international Harri Deaves who actually cooked them. These were gratefully received by the very hungry choristers.
