BIGGEST TURNOUT SO FAR THIS YEAR

With only three of our members missing today the room was full, and all the spaces taken up as we moved to the beautiful CIACCONNE by the group ARPEGGIATA finally resting in a good posture for singing.
There was a nip in the air outside, but when we put all our voices together to sing the African HAMBA NATHA the warmth from the south permeated the room as we blended in close harmony.
Peggy Seager's song LOVE CALL ME HOME is new to our group and we spent some time just singing it through allowing that to sink in before we start to harmonise it next week.
This is a beautiful song I feel sure will be a favourite with us. We ended the morning with Alison Burns's arrangement of the children's song, THE WIND BLOWS HIGH, giving it lots of energy and a rollicking pace.

WE WELCOME SPRING IN ICELANDIC.

On this stunning spring morning, clear sky and bright sunshine, we opened our session listening and moving to Canadian Brass playing Mozart's aria, ALLELUIA. 

Since the brass arrangement is in a key suitable for all our voices, after mentally warming up while listening, we were able to  join in singing the closing downward scales and triumphant ALLELUIAS. This got us off to a good start.

Next we learned the Icelandic Spring canon -- SÁ EG SPÓ

Sá ég spóa -----------     I saw a Curlew  

Suður í flóa      ------------   To the south, on the wetland

Syngur lóa út um móa --------- The golden plover is singing out on the moor

“Bí, bí, bí, bí,”  ---------------        “Bí, bí, bí, bí,”

Vorið er komið víst á ný. --------- Spring has come again, for sure.

The bird calls, bi, bi, bi, bi, are very effective in the canon and after mastering the Icelandic text, (nae bother of course, in this group)

We were soon giving it full voice in four parts.

Curlew

We do have one member, a very keen bird watcher who told us about the plovers she'd seen on the Solway coast and another who remarked on the wonderful feeling on seeing and hearing the first curlew in spring at his home north of the Campsies.

We ended the morning with our favourite spring song from last year, JULIAN OF NORWICH.

AN AFRICA SEASON

Perhaps it helps, in the dark cold days of January, to think of sunny Africa and for the past weeks we've been enjoying the energetic rhythms and warm harmonies of some African songs.

A Call and Response song is always a stimulating way to warm up the voices at the start of our mornings and we've been learning KYE KYE KULE, a traditional song from Ghana.
 Following on after that we come together in the four part harmony of the Zulu song HAMBA NATHI. 

Our bass section is particularly strong just now and it seems to give this song a real African flavour. Remembering that it was used on the soundtrack of the film INVICTUS, about how the poem of this name inspired Nelson Mandela during the years of his confinement on Robben Island, we then sang MANDELA DANCED written by Ian Davison about Mandela's visit to Glasgow in 1993.

TEN THOUSAND MILES, with its harmonies arranged by Alison Burns, now comes across beautifully, and secure now in the four parts, our next challenge is to memorise the words.

We are almost word perfect from memory with SAE WILL WE YET, a favourite with many of us which is now sounding really convincing and we ended the morning with another Alison Burns song, ALWAYS THE SINGING.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR READERS

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