What a night indeed! A night so brilliant, in fact, that it’s taken me almost a week to gather my thoughts on it all.
I’m talking of course about our #PDtPBirthday celebration last Monday, in which we welcomed a record 73 singers to our communal table of beer, cheesy chips and some of the greatest pieces of choral music ever written!
It was lovely to see representation from other music-making groups…
…as well as other regulars who could be relied upon to capture the spirit of the evening with le mot (ou photo) juste…
As for the music, all the works on the setlist proved to be hits (welcome back to our good books, Byrd), with a bit of pizzazz and sparkle coming from Casali‘s double-choir Gaudens gaudebo:
And even the novelty Spem in alium by Jachet de Mantoue was well received!
Speaking of novelty works, it wouldn’t be a #PDtPBirthday without that chorale that may or may not be by Bach:
(Though I think this Twitter notification may have settled the question once and for all:
)
And the post-10pm session was just wonderful too.
Every birthday celebration should have a card (thanks, Caroline)…
…and some cake; thanks to Lucy, Jen and Elli for obliging:
So there you have it; a fantastic celebration of singing and drinking. Thanks to all who came and for everyone else who has supported PDtP and Counterpint over the past 3 years; without all of you, PDtP would be just a bloke sitting in a pub singing to himself.
I want to leave you with one final thought on what I consider to be the greatest birthday present, which I received the previous week at our Counterpint in the Cafe session.
There, in among the regulars, was John. John is 88 years young and has recently returned to singing after a 40 year gap. It was his first visit to one of our events and at the end of the evening he told me that he’d had the time of his life singing with us, so much so that he has also signed up to our Kingston Counterpint in November.
Hearing from John how much he enjoyed the evening was just the best thing ever and made me realise what our little singing project can bring to people.
So here’s to many more years of pub-singing – and I hope you’ll all be joining us for a long time to come!
Cheers
Kevin
Polyphony Down the Pub 