This event has turned into an annual occurrence which the choir look forward to and enjoy the singing of our Welsh repertoire – usually adding a couple of new Welsh songs each time.
This year we had the added input fro residents of Dan Y Mynydd as we have the connection through Valley and Vale Community Arts as tutor and choir member Anke is doing a singing project with the residents. Sadly Lina Charles could not be there to do a Welsh poem as she was ill at the time.
Additionally we were delighted to have the church band accompanying some of our songs – this was all put together on the night – with no time to get together beforehand but worked incredibly smoothly and I hope they will join us again in future?
We also had the Betws Primary School Choir who were wonderful and it’s always so lovely to hear the children singing – they also added their skills in rhythm as we had a couple of spare hand drums and they each took it in turns to play along with the more rhythmic songs!
There was variation from the choir as we had a couple of smaller groups singing to start off songs – first was Leadbelly’s “Bring me Little Water Sylvie” (In an arrangement by Bruce Knight) which was sung half way through brilliantly in 3 part harmony by our 20 year olds – Shaun, Katie and Nia – joined by the rest of the choir. Also we had a lovely German song lead by Anke “Abendstille” which was sung by Anke, Gaynor and Katie the rest of the choir adding a simple backing – really beautiful and confident from all!
As I was busy setting up at the start before the concert I didn’t really have time to warm the group up properly as there was so much to organize the choir had to do this without me and also run through a couple of songs that needed a little going over. They must have done this really well as the whole concert was a dream – the choir seemed to be extra confident – in a lovely relaxed way as all the singing was spot on and the audience loved it! It felt GOOD!