Wow – now that’s what I call going out in style!

What a big, big finish to the season!

Many thanks to all who came, whether you dropped in for a quick motet or stayed to the bitter end – or perhaps I should say the end of the bitter, as we drank through a couple of casks of ale, apparently!

By my reckoning, we welcomed around 50 singers in all, which is by far the most popular session we’ve had in a long time. Whatever the number, you made a big sound, so much so that at times we drowned out the stereo downstairs.

Thanks too to our wonderful guest conductors, Laura, Kathryn and Lucy, bravely standing up in front of a bunch of alcohol-fuelled singers and keeping you all in line.

We also made Twitter history (probably) by providing the world with the first live tweeting on the progress of a 16th Century motet – we truly are innovating in all sorts of incredibly useful ways.

We were fortunate to have 4 or 5 ‘audience members’ last night, all of whom were effusive in their praise for the sound you made, which is very nice to hear.

Oh, and by the way, if any of you are in choirs short on basses, send your recruiting officers around to PDtP as we have them in plentiful supply!

Highlights for me were of course BWV 437 (very well done for getting through it!), the Mouton Ave Maria and de la Rue’s Incessament; drop a comment below to let me know which numbers you particularly enjoyed.

We are taking a short break for the summer, during which we will research some more wonderful music for later in the year. Dates for September and October will be published towards the end of August so please keep an eye out for updates. (Don’t forget that we are also on Twitter: @pubpolyphony)

Looking further ahead, future themes will include the return of our Christmas Special, as well as sessions focussing on the Italian and Iberian Masters; we will also need something big for our 1^st Birthday Extravaganza in October so please do drop us a line with your suggestions, including links to free sheet music whenever possible.

We’ll also be working with our non-London/SE friends to try to set up PDtP sessions elsewhere in the UK and internationally; I don’t know about you, but I am very excited by the prospect of a PDtP network!

Finally, if you enjoy PDtP, please do shout about us to all your singing friends as we want to welcome as many people as we can to these sessions!

Many thanks again to you all and look forward to seeing you after the break.

Kevin

PS I’ll no doubt still be annoying you all with the odd post during the break and I’m always happy to hear your thoughts in return…