I hope that everyone is keeping well and have been enjoying the wonderful sunny weather we have had over the past week. I have been forwarding the Shaftesbury Town Council bulletins which I hope have been both useful and reassuring. I think there have been three up to now. I also tried to remind everyone about the big cheer for the NHS which was held at 8.00 p.m. on Thursday night. Unfortunately, because I have been sending the STC bulletins to everyone, I reached my sending limit (I didn’t know I had one!) before I managed to notify everyone.
As I said last week, although there is no need to reply to this e-mail, if you hear of anything happening (musical or otherwise) that might help keep our spirits up, do let us know and I’ll include details in future newsletters. In this connection, thanks to Kirsten (soprano) for this truly uplifting version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. Those of you who are longtime members of the Community Choir will remember we did a flash mob version of this very piece at one of the Food Festivals. (There are some photos on the website.)
https://slippedisc.com/2020/03/believe-it-orchestra-plays-beethoven-9th-from-their-homes/
Let’s continue stay in touch and get support from each even if we can’t sing together on a Wednesday evening.
PHIL THE FLUTER
Phil’s funeral is going ahead on 31st March at 1.45 and, of course, only immediate family are being allowed to attend. However, Phil’s daughter Fern promises us that the recording we made of “Senzeni Na” is going to be played during the ceremony. Julia has invited Fern to come and meet us on some future occasion too. The tree planting ceremony we talked about a few weeks ago is obviously on hold at the moment. Angela King from the Shaftesbury Tree Group is watering and generally looking after it for us (thankyou Angela) and we will arrange some form of official planting when things have got back to normal.
VIRTUAL CHOIR
Although idea of some form of outdoor singing is not going to be possible, we are still hoping to get some form of on-line music making going. Karen is familiar with this sort of thing and has already successfully experimented with the streaming app “Zoom” with her Palida choir. We might well be able to do something along these lines too. I also wondered about making some MP3s so that choir members could either revise their parts in their own time and sing along with the songs that we already have on our website and maybe learn a few new ones. Watch this space.
IN THE MEANTIME …
Jane Shepherd and Jill Sutton and no doubt a few others as well have signed up to Gareth Malone’s on-line home choir. Register and they send you a link five minutes before the start at 5.30 each day. https://decca.com/greatbritishhomechorus/ Jane (alto) writes: I joined in with this tonight. It was good to sing along. I did wonder what on earth anyone would think I was doing if they heard me. Luckily no neighbours attached to three walls on my stone cottage! Its 5.30 every evening for half an hour on Youtube.
Keep well and keep singing.
David