Choirfest London

Through her embassy affiliation, Kathi got us a couple of free tickets to Choirfest London. It was a performance by an 80-person choir, made up mostly of members of choirs of churches in the Southeastern US, augmented by about 25 Londoners. The organizer was Frank Boggs, founding director of the 90-voice Georgia Festival Chorus and a longtime recording artist for the Christian Word Records Company. A fantastic soprano soloist, Angelique Clay, added immensely to the evening and Boggs shared the conducting duties with guest conductor Noel Tredinnick, well known in the UK as the man behind a long-running BBC show called "Songs of Praise".

Much of the music was classical, with a religious theme, such as Mendelssohn's "He Watching Over Israel" and Schubert's "The Omnipotence". A number of traditional black spirituals livened up the evening, along with traditional folk-songs like "Danny Boy" and some of the most widely loved hymns, such as "Blessed Assurance" and "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing". The arrangement of "Blessed Assurance" involving the chorus, Miss Clay and the audience was a real high point, leaving a lot of moist eyes in the audience.

The concert was held at London's Westminster Methodist Central Hall, an enormous building with fantastic facilities for musical performances, meetings and conventions. The main hall where the concert was held is a glorious room with an enormous, world-class organ.

What a great experience!

Luck be a Lady

On Saturday, June 4th, we were lucky enough to get tickets to the current London production of "Guys and Dolls" -- currently one of the two "hottest" tickets in town (the other being "Billy Elliot"). Though the show still, of course, takes place in a New York City that has long since ceased to exist, the story and the music still "work". It was, as we fully expected it to be, another wonderful music-and-dance evening. Great show. (By the way, the star was Ewan McGregor who made a small stir in Hollywood when he played the lead in the movie Moulin Rouge and did his own singing. He did a credible, but not really great, job in "Guys".)