The choir celebrated its 50 th anniversary on 15 th May 2025. The very first rehearsal took place on 15 th May 1975 in the Chequers pub in Church Crookham where the landlord provided a pitcher of beer to the five founder members gathered in a small room adjoining the lounge bar.
The first event to mark our golden anniversary was a trip to Ireland to take part in the Cork International Choral Festival. Some things haven’t changed over the fifty years of the choir’s life: Guinness may have replaced English bitter as the drink of choice but the love of singing is just the same.
Ireland defied all of the preconceptions about its climate and the tour took place in uninterrupted Mediterranean-style weather.
We were straight into action on arrival with a concert at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork where we performed with Mount Royal Kantorei, a mixed chorus from Calgary in Canada. It was our first taste of the truly international nature of the festival and of the standards achieved by the choirs taking part in the Fleischmann International Trophy Competition for overseas choirs. This was one of the groups we came to know well as we were staying in the same hotel. We shared MDs for our concert, with our MD Kevin Jacot conducting Kantorei for one of their songs while their MD acted as accompanist. We put their MD John Morgan through his paces when he conducted us, with a rendition of Rhythm of Life in double-quick time. We earned our first speeding ticket.
The Meet and Greet event the following day illustrated the diversity of the festival: involving over 5,000 performers (920 of them from overseas) singing in 217 events in 60 venues in and around Cork. In our case, we spent the rest of the day at Blarney Castle singing and admiring the beautiful grounds. It may have been a coincidence but the quality of our singing improved noticeably after the kissing of the Blarney Stone.
Saturday saw us singing at three events in Cobh, a historic seaport at the mouth of the River Lee estuary. We sang in St Colman’s Cathedral, this time with Zarautz Abesbatza Cor, a choir from the Basque Country. We had the quite unexpected experience of joining them in singing The Fields of Athenry in a mixture of Basque and English (a world premiere surely). We had previously established that this was part of their repertoire when singing the song impromptu at a restaurant in Cork. Some lovely melodies in the Basque came from some of the adjoining tables.
It was from there to the bandstand and then on to the balcony of an adjoining hotel. Sunday saw us singing at Mass at the Church of the Annunciation in Blackpool. By this stage, we were learning the benefits of singing more quietly than usual to exploit the acoustics of venues to the maximum. The parishioners were unaware that they would have a visiting choir for the service and judging by the very favourable comments received, it was a pleasant surprise.
Margaret Brackenborough, our previous MD, joined us on the tour. Margaret conducted us at an event held in the atrium of our hotel and then at a later concert. It was the first time she had conducted a choir since leaving us and she showed that the magic was still there.
The Gala Concert in the evening involved each of the choirs in the Fleishmann Trophy singing two songs. The standard of singing on display and the slick choreography was truly remarkable and testament to the quality and sophistication of the competing choirs.
On Monday, we went independent and travelled to Skibbereen for a concert at Abbeystrewry Church. The festival had involved us singing sets and this was the first full-scale concert of the tour. The concert was dedicated to the memory of Rosie, the late sister of our chairman’s wife Veronica. Rosie’s other sister, Helen, had travelled to Skibbereen from Toronto with her daughters and granddaughter. Rosies son Robert and her daughter Gillian travelled from Boston and Seattle respectively to be with us at the concert. Eamonn and Veronica’s daughter Frances had travelled with us from the UK. We were tired and emotional in the best possible way at the end of a performance full of apt and moving songs.
We were not so tired, however, that we could not produce a rousing singsong in the Tanyard pub while we waited for the coach home.