A Christmas celebration with Risca Male Choir – December 2022
The latter part of this year has been a very busy one for our choir, and it ended with 3 official and 1 unofficial Christmas entertainments. We are fortunate to have an extensive collection of items that fit the occasion, many directly concerned with the festive season itself and some to do with the winter season.
Wednesday December 14 – The Philanthropic Pub, Pontywaun
Certainly one of the smallest spaces RMC has ever sung in! There once was someone’s front room, but The Philanthropic comes a close second. Christmas jumpers were the order of the day.
Thursday December 15 – Morrison’s Store, Rogerstone
Sadly, one of the quietest nights for shopping that Morrison’s has ever witnessed! Nevertheless, RMC sung its way through the entire Christmas repertoire. However, there were some wives & friends to appreciate our enthusiastic offering.
Saturday December 17 – The Prince of Wales Pub, Risca
This event was not an “0fficial” one, and the whole choir with music team was not expected to be present.
Because of winter colds and coughs, it was a depleted army of choristers that turned up at the pub on Saturday evening. But such is the skill of our singers that they provided a Christmas sing-along, even with moments of added harmonies. Moreover, there were a number of revellers that showed an interest in coming along to a practice session at choir HQ in the New Year! This just shows the importance of presenting ourselves to our locality to attract new members. The future looks good!
Sunday December 18 – Tredegar House Victorian Christmas
And after a period of crisp, dry, cold wintry weather, today it rained! It was actually to our advantage as we were now housed in the old stone barn rather than being in the open air. Here we were able to form as a choir and so produced some good choral singing. It was also easy to hear the amplified keyboard, thanks to the guys who fetched, carried and set up the machine, to Alison who played it with, I imagine, very cold fingers, and to our new and very young MD, Matt who guided us through, and kept the audience well informed of, our programme. It was a very successful event and our audience bullied us into an encore: “Simply having a wonderful Christmas time!”
So ended our year, and we now look forward to settling into 2023 with all the new and exciting things we have planned musically and socially. We also look forward to seeing you in our audience, or maybe even joining the ranks of our singers for a hobby you will not regret.
