Bournemouth Male Voice Festival 2009

In case you are interested in taking a gander at how the programme for Bournemouth this year is taking shape, you can download it here.

There are to be four choirs - Bournemouth MVC and ourselves, of course, plus Hampshire Police MVC and some new friends, Swindon MVC. We're going back to the format of a few joint items concluding two halves where each choir gets the chance to shine on its own. Having a handbell group will add some nice variety, too.

The concert will be held at St. Ambrose Church in Westbourne; this is the church that was going to be the venue for the concert we ended up performing in Christchurch Priory, owing to its demise by fire (in fact, there seem to be a couple of articles relating to the fire on the church's web site). Well, it's now repaired, and I'm told that it's a very impressive church, seating upwards of 500! Let's hope it's a sellout, like the Priory was.

I have chosen the following items for our contribution, in this order:

373 African Prayer
253a Jacob's Ladder
69/289-3/376-16 Love, Could I Only Tell Thee
307 Portrait Of My Love
348-27 When The Saints Go Marching In

You'll notice that we're first on in the second half. I make it 17 mins of music - a great start to open, I think!

I'll be conducting 165 Gwahoddiad - but you'll also notice that they've given it the English title of I Hear Thy Welcome Voice - so we'll be singing it in English, as we've done before.

Note also that when we sing 136 Morte Criste to end the programme, the words change in the last verse from "...that were a present far too small..." to "...that were an offering far too small...".

More as I get it.