SYDNEY WELSH CHOIR REPORT
The Sydney Welsh Choir is enjoying a typically productive
and entertaining year. It began with a well attended
concert at the Joan Sutherland Centre, Penrith, for the
Red Cross, with guest soloist Lorenzo Rositano, and continued
through the next two weekends, either side of March 1,
with St David's concerts at Sutherland Entertainment
Centre and Dee Why RSL Club. The Sutherland concert drew
a capacity audience of over 600 people. We broke new
ground by being invited to sing at a wedding in St George's
Lebanese Cathedral, then toured Port Macquarie and Laurieton
over Easter, drawing capacity audiences to both venues.
Members of the choir always get a thrill from performing
to appreciative audiences; on tour there is the added
bonus of the great camaraderie among the choir and the
hospitality of the host organisations, in this case the
Uniting Church congregations of Port Macquarie and Laurieton.
After a concert at the large Wirreanda Retirement Village,
our next engagement was of a very different nature, as
the only choir performing on Anzac Day at the official
service at the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, following the
march. This moving ceremony, attended by the Governor and
featuring a speech by the Premier ended on a more light-hearted
note as the choir sang Vera Lynn songs and other WWII favourites
with the Police Concert Band. Later that week came a concert
with Welshman Jacques Renay of "The Tom Jones Experience" at
Ryde-Eastwood Leagues Club.
In our standard concert format, the choir is conducted
by our ebullient Director of Music, Viv Llewellyn, and
his assistant, Mary Ball, who conducted us on our last
European tour. Narelle Albers is our accompanist, Cheryl
Priest our usual soloist and Clive Woosnam the narrator.
We have over seventy singers in the choir, though we rarely
get more than sixty on stage at any one time.
Future concerts are shown in the events diary. Please
note that, to our great disappointment, Aled Jones has
cancelled his tour to Australia, though he will still
be visiting New Zealand. As a result, the two concerts
we were performing with him will not take place, but
the Sydney Welsh Choir will still be included in a track
on Aled's new CD. The concert with the British Lions
Choir at the Opera House on 11 July is also definitely
taking place.
Plans are now firming for next
year’s exciting tour
of Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, England and Wales.
Any new members who wish to join the choir (soprano, alto,
tenor or bass) should come along to one of our enjoyable
practice sessions in Concord, take a look at the DVD of
the brilliant 2002 tour, and join the choir early enough
to get a substantial subsidy towards next year’s
tour. Among our younger new members we have Gavin Stephens
and Sarah Campbell (pictured).
Gavin writes: “Sarah and I were both in a Community choir in Wollongong
during University and when we moved to Sydney we decided
to join the Sydney Welsh Choir and as my father is Welsh
I already knew most of the popular songs. My father’s
entire family migrated to Whyalla from Merthyr Tydfil to
work at the BHP steelworks in 1967.
Its quite difficult for young people who work and study
to be involved in community activities, but we try to
attend as many practices and performances as we can because
we love to sing. We enjoy learning songs in Welsh because
of the challenge of not just getting the part right but
to pronounce the words correctly. It makes me proud to
be part of a group promoting Welsh culture in Australia.
My Welsh grandmother was so proud of me when I sang to
her in Welsh.”
Anyone interested in joining the choir should phone 9997
2019, 94517806 or 9621 5858.
Woosnams On Tour
May 2005
We've had a
very hectic week with a lot of travelling but it has nearly
all gone
very
well.
We saw quite a lot of a very dry Dubai in our 32 hours
there, have covered a lot of a cold but very green South
Wales, and have enjoyed a family reunion and a very pleasant
meeting with the choir members in Pontypool. In between
we visited beautiful Bruges which is a truly magnificent
place despite the cold winds, and were impressed with Ypres,
especially since we were there yesterday on the 60th anniversary
of VE Day, with parades taking place. We haven't had much
sleep yet, and we've been through Customs and X Ray machines
more times than we care to count, but it has been a very
eventful week. Tomorrow we head back into the byways of
England.
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