Category: News

The church was full, the choir members of the three choirs themselves numbered over 100 and what an uplifting sound. Bring Him Home was the finale piece and with some very clever rearrangement by Nicky the MD of Sonara the ladies’ and men’s voices blended beautifully.
Our Mansfield choir was the smallest in number on stage but we no doubt punched above our weight with fabulous renditions of Kwmbayah and African Trilogy. Super diction, particularly in Soldiers’ Chorus, dynamics and stage management afforded us a most professional presentation.
Radcliffe on Trent choir staged a massive choir following their extremely successful recruitment campaign conducted this year under the title “Men United in Song” For me their best item was Crossing the Bar and it was great to see their newer members enthusiastically giving of their best. Sonara provided a beautiful contrast with their soprano and alto voices and haunted us with their performances of Kyria and Adiemus. The gospel version of Hail Holy Queen concluded their super contribution to the concert. The church infrastructure is a 1960s delight with superb stained glass and artistically designed concrete and wood used as the building materials. The acoustics are one of the best in the area. So, a super building with three choirs – it was indeed Threefold Joy.

Over 100 choristers, family members and guests attended the Hostess Restaurant in Mansfield Woodhouse to enjoy a fantastic evening of entertainment to celebrate our 80th anniversary. The troupe of actors portraying the central characters from the hit 80s TV series Allo Allo were simply brilliant. We were all laughing and cheering at their slapstick antics and the comedy dinner arrangement worked so well. Our hosts provided a lovely meal, efficiently served and timed to fit with the unfolding story presented by hilarious actors.

During the evening the actor playing Rene the owner of the “umble café” explained that a German sausage was being used to conceal a bomb and that a second sausage was used to conceal the “Picture of the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies” by Van Clump.

Photographed here are Al and Roisin (pronounced Sheen for short) which was corrupted to Jean by Rene. Here is Jean looking after one of the sausages.- Hilarious!

One of our guests, Kelly Grey, had a photograph taken with the actors.

Geoff Hurtshouse, choir Chairman, spoke of the 80-year history of the choir and wished us all well in continuing the legacy followed by Ian Grice who led the choir to perform three songs, “Neapolitan Trilogy, “ Let it be me” and “African Prayer”.

These events bring the choir together so well. Our choir family keeps its strength through performing and the fellowship that these family events provide. It was a great “newt” for all concerned.

Not only was the weather pleasant, if not, very warm for singing, the concert was a hot and a quality performance by the choir fresh from our Royal Albert Hall appearance at the end of April.

The choir entertained a capacity audience at The Hill Methodist Church in Kirkby in Ashfield in support of their roof repair fund. The concert was organised a part of a series of summer events at the church by Karen Grice (the sister-in-law of our MD) and it was lovely to perform as a solo choir which gave opportunity to two soloists (Dan Hayes and Anthon Bramley – well done guys) and our accompanists Margaret and Maureen (very well done indeed) and our octet the GentleMen. We performed an eclectic mix of music from Dvorak to Coldplay and from Welsh hymns to African traditional music, all of which made for an enjoyable evening. That is what the audience told us after the concert, many of whom were asking about tickets for future concerts, particularly our major male voice festival concert at Southwell Minster on 5th October to celebrate our 80th anniversary.