Audlem Voices Winter Concert

Holly... Ivy... Angels... Love ... and Folk Like Us!

Did you miss it? Weren't you there? Never mind! here's your chance to get a sense of what it was like on that wonderful night!

A (slightly) warmer – and dryer – patch of weather had the effect of tempting a motley crowd of Audlemites and assorted blow-ins from further afield to boldly venture out to St James on Friday 8 December to the Audlem Voices Winter Concert. And what a treat awaited them!

Early birds were treated to the sound of music from the corner by the Lady Chapel as the members of Folk Like Us, our guest performers, warmed up with White Christmas behind the pillars and got accustomed to the St James acoustic.

Folk Like Us with ladies of the choir

Jon Richardson, Chair of Audlem Voices, welcomed everyone and explained the ever-so-complicated logistics designed to allow five instrumentalists to evict ten choristers and take over their space for their part of the programme and then put everybody back again. (The audience were rapt, you could tell...) He then introduced Jenny Collis-Smith, our Musical Director and founder, and Naomi Newman, our accompanist, and we were off!

Hark the Herald Angels Sing, with full audience participation, carried peace on earth and mercy mild up to the rafters at full volume, and you could honestly say we were all singing from the same hymn sheet. The Bethlehem Carol sheet, to be precise!

Carol of the Huron Indians, in contrast, is a very gentle melodic carol with a rhythmic drum-like beat, written in the 1640s by a French Jesuit missionary who lived among the indigenous peoples around Lake Huron in Canada. He wrote this version of the nativity story in their language, Wendat, using imagery drawn from their culture. An English version by Jesse Edgar Middleton only appeared in 1926. (That's 300 years later...)

Our next piece, the richly baroque...

"Baroque"!??

To find out what was richly baroque – and much more – just click here! https://voices.audlem.org/concert-reports/holly-ivy-angels-winter-2023.html