An enjoyable and rewarding day of singing.

On Saturday May 18 almost 100 members of the Wellington Community Choir came over to Martinborough in a convoy of vans,and took part in a great ‘sing-shop’ (workshop), combining with about 40 enthusiastic local singers. Of the locals, about half of those who attended belong to the Martinborough Community Choir, also quite a few from the Featherston Gentlemen’s Choir, as well as a few keen local singers who currently aren’t choir members.

The sing-shop was held in St. Andrew’s Church hall, which has great acoustics for singing. It was led by the amazing and energetic Julian Raphael, and his assistant choir leader, Carol Shortis who also did a fantastic job of teaching us.We had fun learning several African songs during the course of the afternoon; and later that evening, we combined with the Wellington choir to sing those songs together at the end of their fantastic concert.

One song I particularly enjoyed was ‘Asimbonanga’, which was about the great South African leader, Nelson Mandela. As we had to memorize all of the words and tunes to the songs, some of us – who are used to reading music -were well out of our comfort zone, but that somehow heightened the sense of achievement we felt at the end of the day.
After the workshop, the singers had a dinner break, and the Martinborough Choir members shared a hearty dinner with the Wellingtonians.

The concert attracted an audience of quite a few locals, and among them were friends and family of the sing-shop attendees. The Wellington choir sang a varied selection of African songs, and other world music, including a couple of Bob Marley tunes, accompanied by keyboard, guitar, mandolin and bass, finishing with the 130-140 strong combined choir singing our new songs. A lot of happy, smiling faces left St Andrew’s hall that night, after an
exhilarating day.

An added bonus is that we now have a choir bank account – thanks to the generosity of the Wellington Choir, in offering us half of the day’s door takings – so we will be able to plan further workshops. In the pipeline is an evening gospel singing workshop, hopefully later this year, with Tony Backhouse.

If anyone is interested in learning more about community singing here are some websites, and choir contacts.

Martinborough Community Choir:
vicbjones@gmail.com
Featherston Gentlemen’s Choir:
Marguerite Tait-Jamieson
longwood@xtra.co.nz