Thus ends the first half

The first half of our 2014 season drew to a close with a fine Choral Evensong in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow on Saturday 14th June, following which a pleasingly high number of choir members moved along the road a little to Munro's Pub where despite the noisy (but good natured) crowd already there enjoying the soccer world cup on TV we took advantage of a couple of tables being booked for us (it's where St Mary's Cathedral choir members go on a Sunday after Choral Evensong so the staff are friendly and accommodating) and socialised happily for the next few hours.

The service was led by Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, who sang the Clucas responses for us, and we were directed by Frikki Walker and accompanied by Richard Walmsley.

The next time we meet will be for our annual residential rehearsal weekend in August but that doesn't involve any public performance, so the next time you can hear us sing is on Saturday 6th September 2014 when we will sing Choral Evensong at 4pm in St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Dundee.

In the meantime our choir administrator and director of music will be meeting in the next few days to decide on the dates and venues for 2015 (yes, it really does need done this far in advance!) and that meeting will also involve the administrator of RSCM Young Scottish Voices.  After singing with us for the first time very successfully and enjoyably in Paisley Abbey a couple of weeks ago it is the intention that while still taking part in their own events the youngsters will sing a bit more often with the adult choir, and this is the first step in making that happen.  Watch this space for further details!

Perth and Old Saint Paul's

After our successful and very enjoyable recital in the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling yesterday, the next opportunity to hear RSCM Scottish Voices sing is when members join forces with other local choirs to sing Handel's Messiah under the direction of Richard Walmsley in St Ninian's Episcopal Cathedral, Perth, on Saturday 31st March 2012.  Further details will be listed here when available.

The next time you can hear us on our own is during Choral Evensong on Saturday 28th April 2012 in Old Saint Paul's Church, Jeffrey St, Edinburgh. The music list will be announced here soon.

Paisley report

On Saturday RSCM Scottish Voices visited Thomas Coats Memorial Baptist Church in Paisley (TCM) where at their request we sang Choral Evensong and were made to feel very welcome indeed by their organist Matthew Edwards and various members of the church who kindly provided us with tea and biscuits whenever we stopped singing for more than a couple of minutes.

A very heartfelt thanks from all in the choir for the excellent hospitality, and it was good to see between 30-40 people in the congregation on such a cold foggy evening!

The setting of TCM is spectacular, and I commend the Blog post of Pencefn, one of our own choir members, who describes the building and a bit of its history.

Musically it felt good, and according to Frikki Walker, our Musical Director, every time we meet we continue to get a little bit better, so the future still looks bright.

After the service a fairly big crowd of choir and friends managed to squeeze into one of the snugs at the rear of The Bull Inn, the oldest pub in Paisley, where we enjoyed good Real Ale and tasty food, and socialised for several hours.

All in all another good day, and a good start to 2011.

Our next service is on Saturday 5th March 2011 at 4pm in Dunblane Cathedral.  Full details of the music will appear here in due course, so watch this space.

City of Discovery and wine

Another good day was had by all.

Last weekend saw RSCM Scottish Voices sing Choral Evensong in St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Dundee, and leaving aside the visits to two churches and a cathedral where some of our own members sing, this had to be the warmest welcome yet, and it was certainly the biggest congregation!

And not only that, one of the cathedral choir expressed an interest in joining us, so had an audition pretty much there and then, so welcome to the choir Paul!

The enthusiasm with which my initial approach to the Cathedral's Pastoral Musician, Stuart Muir, was met last year, was matched by the generous welcome we received from all at Dundee, from the tea, coffee and cakes we were fed on arrival, to the wine, sandwiches, wine, snacks and wine to which we were treated at the end of the service.  Thanks folks, it was appreciated by all the choir, and was very much talked about in the pub afterwards!

The pub we went to was DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts) a few minutes walk from the Cathedral, which was bright, airy, comfortable, and served alcohol, so it was a winner.  The crowd who went there wasn't quite as big as normally go out to play after our services, and we didn't stay as long as normal, but that can be attributed to the generous amount of wine provided by the cathedral after the service, negating the need for more booze, and also the fact that a few of the regular pub attendees were missing from the day for perfectly valid reasons ranging from the writing of the final bit of a Thesis, being in Orkney working at the St Magnus Festival, the work-related requirement to speak to Housing Association Tenants about central heating at an Open Day, and probably the best excuse being the impending delivery of Nic and Carson's first child (which is actually due today but at the time of writing this appears not to have happened yet [although I'm currently relying on Facebook updates for my info] - an announcement will doubtless follow in due course!).

Two of us were staying in Dundee overnight, so we went for a good look round the city the next day, finding a pub in which to watch the Italy v New Zealand football game in the afternoon.  The one-all draw against the current World Cup Holders was as good as winning the World Cup itself for New Zealand, much to Ruth's delight!

Dundee is a really nice arty city, with lots of little statues and artworks dotted about the streets, and it's well worth a visit.  Patrticularly good was the Discovery Exhibition, which was exceptionally well presented.  Go there, next time you get a chance.

Dundee

St Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Dundee this coming Saturday is the next occasion when you can hear RSCM Scottish Voices sing.

The service of Choral Evensong starts at 4pm, lasts probably a bit less than an hour, and the music we will be singing is:

Introit: Jubilate Deo in C (Benjamin Britten)
Responses: William Smith of Durham
Canticles: Daniel Purcell in e minor
Anthem: Ye choirs of new Jerusalem (Sir Charles Villiers Stanford)

The Cathedral can be found at 1 High St, Dundee DD1 1TD.

The service should be good, so why not come along and hear us.

Choral Evensong today - roll up roll up!

RSCM Scottish Voices will be singing Choral Evensong today at 4pm in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, 300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.

The music list is:

Introit: Salvator Mundi - John Blow (1649-1708)
Responses: Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
Canticles: Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in e minor -  Daniel Purcell (1664-1717)
Anthem: Lord, let me know mine end - Maurice Greene (1696-1755)

Why not come along and take an hour out your busy day to find a place of peace and tranquility amidst glorious music.

Glasgow, February 2010

The next event for RSCM Scottish Voices is a full Choral Evensong on the first Saturday in Lent, which is 20th February 2010, in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, 300 Great Western Road, Glasgow at 4pm.

The music list is:

Introit: Salvator Mundi - John Blow (1649-1708)
Responses: Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
Canticles: Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in e minor -  Daniel Purcell (1664-1717)
Anthem: Lord, let me know mine end - Maurice Greene (1696-1755)

Afterwards we shall retire to the nearby Lansdowne Bar for an after-service fluid replacement session!

It should be a very good service, not only because the choir continues to improve and gel together, but also because it's Lent, the season leading up to Easter, and the penitential music relevant to that season of the church always tends to be rather lovely in my humble opinion.

The choir still has a few vacancies for singers, so if you are aged 18 or over, live in Scotland, have experience in church choral singing, and would like to be considered for an audition or would like more information, please contact the choir administrator at scottishvoices@rscmscotland.org for an application form.

Holders of RSCM Bronze, Silver or Gold awards need not audition, but should contact the administrator for further details.

Haddington 2010

The next meeting of RSCM Scottish Voices will be a service in St Mary's Parish Church in Haddington, East Lothian at 4pm on Saturday 16th January 2010.  That's a week tomorrow.

Music will include:

Bethlehem Down (Warlock); O Magnum Mysterium (Victoria); Lo star-led chiefs (Crotch); The Coventry Carol (trad arr Willcocks); There is a star (trad Spiritual); How brightly beams the morning star (Bach).

As ever we will be conducted by Frikki Walker, and accompanied by Richard Walmsley.

It'd be great to see a nice big congregation in this lovely historic church, which is in Sidegate, Haddington EH41 4BZ.

On their Website, they describe how to find the church as:

The market town of Haddington is 20 miles East of Edinburgh along the A1 dual carriageway.  Travelling East take the second exit to Haddington - St Mary's is signposted from the main road.  Look to the South, and you will see the old church tower in the distance.

The choir still has some vacancies for singers, so if you are aged 18 or over, are resident in Scotland, have experience in church choral singing, and would like to be considered for an audition or would like more information, please contact the choir administrator at scottishvoices@rscmscotland.org for an application form.

Holders of RSCM Bronze, Silver or Gold awards need not audition, but should contact the administrator for further details.

Edinburgh, November 2009

Although the photo, taken by gordonrasmith, is from our summer residential weekend back in August, our most recent service took place last Saturday, 28th November, at 4pm in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh, when we sang Choral Evensong.

The music list was:

Introit: Hear my Prayer - Henry Purcell
Responses: John Sanders
Psalms: 137 & 138
Canticles: Hugh Blair in b minor
Anthem: Hail Gladdening Light - Charles Wood
Hymn:  Ye Holy Angels Bright (NEH 475), Tune: Darwall's 148th (James Darwall), Descant by Frikki Walker.

RSCM Scottish Voices is a choir made up of choristers from a variety of church choirs around Scotland, and we only meet on the day of a service, with no rehearsals in between apart from a residential rehearsal weekend once a year in the summer.  So that means we need to work pretty hard on the day of a service to not only polish or indeed sometimes learn the music, but also to get used again to singing with each other.  That might sound odd to non-choristers but anyone who's ever joined an ad-hoc choir will understand it.

So at 10am on a freezing cold Saturday morning we all met outside the rather beautifully decorated Song School, with its murals by Phoebe Traquair, before the choir administrator found the vergers' office and got us access to the building.

A couple of hours of rehearsal, including in the Cathedral itself, and we broke for lunch for an hour or so, and then reassembled for more rehearsal.  I believe various lunch options were tried, ranging from home made sandwiches, through Greggs the bakers, to local pubs!

There was a concert later that evening in the Cathedral, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, and we had to fit in with the rehearsal times for that so we had limited time in the Cathedral immediately before Evensong, but Frikki Walker, our exceptionally talented Musical Director, managed to top and tail everything that was needed.  Our organist is Richard Walmsley but he was engaged in a rehearsal for the following day's live BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Sunday Worship from his home church, St Ninian's Episcopal Cathedral in Perth, so at fairly short notice we were joined and very ably accompanied by Geoff Bolton, a work colleague of Richard's.

Two of the clergy of the cathedral joined us for Evensong, and made us feel very welcome, as indeed had the verger earlier in the day.  The service went pretty well and the one or two slightly scary moments from the rehearsals seemed to pass uneventfully!

And so the official part of the day was over.

Many of us had travelled by public transport, and so we moved onto the next bit of the day, the all important after service fluid replacement session!

One of our choristers lives in Edinburgh (and sings in the choir of the rather lovely Old St Paul's Episcopal Church) and she recommended a local hotel, the Edinburgh Thistle Hotel in nearby Manor Place, on the basis that since Scotland had been playing Argentina at Rugby at nearby Murrayfield Stadium then most of the local pubs would be very busy but the hotel might be a bit quieter. 

She was right to recommend it. 

Good beer, a good atmosphere, and the Wales v Australia Rugby game on a big screen, watched by a decent sized and very good natured crowd consisting largely of, I was repeatedly told by more than one of our sopranos and altos, very good looking men!

Inevitably not all choir members will make it to the socialising afterwards, although all are invited, but out of the roughly 30 choristers who had sung Evensong there must have been almost 20 in the bar afterwards, albeit split into three groups because of the available seating.

A few beers, wines, port & brandies, and gin & tonics later, not to mention the baguettes filled with sausage consumed towards the end of the evening, and the last 4 of us of us left the hotel heading for the 9pm train from Haymarket to Glasgow, which we caught with perfect timing, despite some rather unsteady walking!  A portion or two of the best that Burger King had to offer at Glasgow Central Station, where we'd all walked to continue the last legs of our journeys home after arriving at Queen Street from Edinburgh and we went our separate ways.

A long day, but a fine day of music making and. most importantly, friendship.

RSCM Scottish Voices as a choir is in its very early days, and still has much of its musical potential to fulfil, but fulfil it we will with a great deal of determination by its members, and an enormous amount of skill, enthusiasm, fun and professionalism by our Music Director Frikki Walker, assisted by our fine organist Richard Walmsley.  But there's more to a choir than just music, vitally important as that is, and in the brief year since we were founded, and having met each other less than ten times, we have already bonded together and many good friendships have been forged, and that makes a firm foundation for some excellent music making.

If you are over 18, live in Scotland, have choral experience, and are looking for a choir that meets around half a dozen times a year for a day each time to sing in a variety of churches and cathedrals around Scotland (with the associated socialising of course), then you could do a lot worse than to audition for RSCM Scottish Voices.  Contact the administrator if you want more details or want to arrange an audition. 

Go on, you won't regret it.