Dear Editor, Greetings from the City of Bath Male Choir. We have just returned from the Cornish International Male Choir Festival WWW.CIMCF.UK and thought your readers may be interested to know that we won the competition and the boys from Bath were voted the best choir in the UK! AND have a huge silver cup to prove it!
As you may know Grenville Jones set up the Bath Male Choir 20 years ago. He is also the founder of Goldies, a charity that reaches out to isolated people through the power of singing, in afternoon choirs. Recently he was awarded The Patrons Award for Individual Achievement. There is more information on his website www.grenvillejones.biz. Sadly Grenville was not able to come to Cornwall with us, as he was too unwell.
His son Laurie Jones took over the choir a few years ago and under his guidance, the choir has gone from strength to strength. Apart from being busy with the choir, Laurie is also head of music at Westonbirt School.
Our accompanist is called Dominic Irving, who plays piano like a dream and is a composer and has arranged several of the songs we sing. Find out more about him at www.dominicirving.com .
The competition took place in Truro Cathedral, which is a wonderful place to sing in. We had to sing three song, at least one being acapella ( we sung two ). The acoustics were wonderful and our last note went up to the roof and circled the whole cathedral before just drifting away. For a singer it was bliss. There was stiff competition from other choirs in the West Country, including from Cirencester and Minehead, but also choirs from the rest of the country and abroad.
Laurie chose a wonderful song for us to sing called Prayer of the Children. It was written in 1993 by a composer called Kurt Beslor about the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, but it is just as current today with all the conflicts going on in the world. Near the end of the song is a section that we sing in Ukraine. As Grenville Jones said a group of men singing about children sends a very powerful message. We hope that by singing this message of peace that people will listen. We sing that all these wars will end.
Now you are probably dying to hear what we sound like! So the whole 2 day festival can be found on Youtube, but here is the section we performed in and won. https://youtu.be/ICT1ljsYzxA?t=3534 approximate timestamp 01:13:00
The choir sing a variety of other songs. Some are familiar to people including; He’s my brother, as sung by the Hollies and My Girl by the Temptations. But wait until you hear what Dominic can do with these arrangements and wait to hear 50 male voices in 4 part harmony. We also belt out our version of Happy Days and channel our inner Fonz- aye !
AND we hope to see you at the Party in the City, in the evening of May 15th at the Christ Church on Julian Road. AND we are also singing at the Choir Festival at Green Park station Bath the following day.
Yours, David Ayres, tenor, City of Bath Male Choir.
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