All Saints Church Odiham – Saturday 7 Dec 19
All Saints Church in Odiham was filled with an enthusiastic capacity audience of nearly 170 for the Hart Male Voice Choir’s Christmas Concert. Special guest this year was exciting Mezzo Soprano Beth Mabin who is a previous winner of the 2009 & 2013 Hart MVC Young Singers Competitions and currently completing a Musical Performance degree at the Royal Academy of Music. Beth was delighted to be singing with Hart Male Voice Choir again and was joined by Zoe Legge a Winner of the Chairman’s Prize at the 2019 Hart MVC Young Singers Competition. Beth and Zoe delighted the audience with their own solos as well as joining with the choir for ‘ O Holy Night ‘ and ‘ Once in Royal David’s City’
Musical Director Kevin Jacot presented a lively Christmas programme with a mix of festive music, old traditional Christmas songs and of course audience participation. There was a wonderfully warm Christmas atmosphere in All Saints as the clear tones of young soloists mixed with rich voices of the choir and audience and reverberated beautifully around the ancient medieval rafters of All Saints Church.
At the interval wine and mince-pies helped to complete the festive feeling for everyone. This wonderful concert ended with a rousing rendition of ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas!‘ by the choir, soloists and a very enthusiastic and appreciative audience.
As is traditional at Hart MVC Christmas concerts in the second half the audience were treated to a very jolly version of ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’ complete with red hats for the whole choir, which delighted the audience.
Unfortunately Hart MVC piano accompanist Judith Morgan was unwell and unable to play at the concert. So MD Kevin Jacot was multi-tasking as conductor, pianist and organist for the evening, assisted at times by previous recordings of Kevin and Judith’s accompaniments.
There were lots of smiles and thanks for a great night from the departing audience.
