Good to see folk again last night and lovely to hear Marga (tenor) ‘s beautiful singing of “Pokarekare Ana”. A real joy. Thankyou Marga. Karen and I are going to make a new backing track for “Love is Here” so with luck we’ll do rather better with that next week. Slow internet speeds are a real nuisance though and I suspect the early evening is a particularly busy time. I came across a curious version of the song over the week. If you click on the following link you can catch it. https://soundcloud.com/paul-cox-25/love-is-here-by-nick-prater. It is slower than ours and obviously sung in some vast, resonant building. The build-up is a real mess I think but there are some nice moments later on. I wonder how many of you can spot the musical difference between our version and theirs though?
As we know however, several choir members are not able to join in for whatever reason. Think of those who you see on-line and those you don’t. If you don’t have contact details and feel any of the absentees might like a phone call or something, just email Julia, Karen or me and we will try and put you in touch.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY - A MESSAGE FROM JULIA
We have just heard that we have been successful in securing a grant from the Wessex Water Recovery Fund, so, in addition to a donation from Shaftesbury Charitable Trust and an anonymous donation from a very kind person, this will help us to retain our subs at only £2 a week. There'll be no need to raise them as we'd feared but thank you to all who wrote to say they would be happy to help by paying more.
We can keep going now until at least the end of April by which time, with a fair wind and copious supply of vaccine, we may be able to tentatively start meeting again together. If not, we should still be able to keep meeting at our usual cost until we're liberated.
Do tell any of your friends or family who would like to join us to please come along. It doesn't matter where they live - we have no borders!
DCC CLIMATE STRATEGY
Dorset County Council declared a climate emergency last year and they now have completed a first draft of their climate strategy. You have until Jan 20th to comment on this very important document. The document is long so you can choose to answer it in full or do the quick 2 minute version. 17 people in Planet Shaftesbury have prepared their own reply as well as Dorset CAN who have prepared a guide which you could use to cut and paste from. There is also a petition calling for carbon zero dates to be revised to 2030 in line with climate science which you could sign and share (this is the date the Church of England are also signed up for). All of these links can be found on the front page of the Planet Shaftesbury website. https://www.planetshaftesbury.org/
ONLINE ARTS DIARY
For up to date information about online arts programmes, don’t forget to check the Fine Times Recorder’s listings. There are lots of wonderful free things to see and listen to on-line: http://www.theftr.co.uk/whats-on/
Keep safe and well, keep in touch, keep on singing, and see you next week.
David
14 January 2021