This week it was back to rehearsals for another coming season having returned from our tour of Malta.
After many months of planning and hard work by our tour co-ordinator Peter Spacey the time had finally come for us to fly off to Malta for our 40th anniversary tour. And so for the last week in October the tour went pretty much without a hitch.
With substantial assistance from the Lions International Malta concerts were arranged in three magnificent venues and all of them had good audiences. We sang in the Stella Maris Church in Sliema first of all and finished with our concert in the St. Paul’s Protestant Cathedral in the capital city of Valetta. Both of these are magnificent venues but magnificent though they were, they were eclipsed by our concert in Gozo where we sang at the St. George’s Basilica, the baroque Roman Catholic Church in Victoria. It is not often the choir will have the privilege to sing at such splendid venues and we are pleased that we were able to do them justice with an excellent performance in all of them.
We also sang at the Union club of Malta with a more light-hearted repertoire to a members only audience with the choir being honorary members for the evening. I am sure that we left the audience wanting more in every case which is always a good way to conclude. The choir all wore red poppies on their choir shirts for this performance.
I did say the tour went pretty much without a hitch but there was one minor hitch or more of an unhitch really when MD Wilbur during a particularly energetic burst of conducting found that one of the straps on his braces inconveniently came loose. I imagine that this may have been a first for the Stella Maris Church. Fortunately, the other strap held firm and there were no injuries amongst the front row of dignitaries. Most of all Wilbur did not allow this to impact on the professionalism of his conducting.
In between concerts and rehearsals the choir put on impromptu singing sessions on request in the hotel lobby and in local hostelries. We were also able to visit many of the historic venues and exhibitions on the islands and also partook with enthusiasm in the more recent practice of imbibing the local brew called Cisk. We understand the custom is known as getting well and truly “Cisked” though of course none of the choir went quite that far.
Some of the choir supporters also took amateur videos of our performances and these are available on Youtube. Just do a search on “Youtube Tenby Male Choir, Malta” and I recommend the video of “Bring Him Home” to get an idea of the singing and the surroundings.
Although our season has ended now we do have one final commitment of the year when we will sing at the Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday 08 November. Given the amount of history surrounding Malta’s valiant fight and significant loss of life in WWII, it is a fitting service for us all to return to.
There are also links to choir videos on our excellent website at www.tenbymalechoir.org and you can read or even add to our Guestbook from the home page. We also have a Facebook account if you want to be one of our Friends.
If ever there was a convenient time to come and join your local choir this is the time as we start the learning process of new songs in earnest and also brush up on any weak areas of existing songs without the pressure of concerts to perform.
