The Armed Man
7 February 2022
Back in 2020 we were schedule to sing Sir Karl Jenkins’s The
Armed Man: a Mass for Peace with the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra, but it was a casualty of Covid. We were reschedule for
2021, and it was cancelled by Covid once again. So last night we
were thrilled to be able to finally stage this concert, with our
great friend Adrian Partington at the helm, and Northampton’s own
Rebecca Bottone as our soloist. Putting this performance together
only five weeks after returning from our Christmas break was
challenging, but the choir rose to the occasion and thrilled a large
audience in Derngate. It was such fun to be performing again with
such a large orchestra, and with an immense battery of percussion.
The Rehearsal in Full Flight
|
|
A Bird's Eye View of the Rehearsal
|
Covid continued to make its presence felt, and nearly 30 choir
members were absent from the performance with either positive Covid
tests or with symptoms which might have been Covid, and our muezzin,
Naeem Mamood, was also unwell. Nevertheless, we were able to field a
choir of just short of 100 members (thanks in no small part to our
Musical Director’s #22for22
initiative which has seen over thirty new members join the choir in
recent months) - and 35 tenors and basses (were it not for Covid it
would have been 48!) showing that we are fielding a very balanced
choir indeed.
Save me from Bloody Men
|
|
The View from the Basses
|
Before the choir sang The Armed Man we were spellbound by
the orchestra’s rendition of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro
and - a work which many of us didn’t know - Walton’s Portsmouth
Point Overture. We have an invitation to join the RPO for
another concert (19 May 2024 - keep the date in your diaries), and
are hugely looking forward to it already!
|
