Happy Christmas!

Festive greetings to all!

Lier was a beautiful place in which to have such a last outing just before Christmas ... beautiful city...
...& no weather-travel issues, unlike previous Belgian trips in the Festive season... Hooray.
...and a splendid on-time comfortable Eurostar home... bliss.

A great Belgian tour - thanks to Thomas Van der Spiegel for all his hard work.

Oh, we had Christmas at home!

Now we are in the middle of our run at the Crazy Coqs cabaret in central London at Brasserie Zédel... delightful venue with wonderful staff... and the shows are going very well... a little bit valedictory as they are Richard's last gigs in the UK - very last one tonight - but still a lovely atmosphere and great fun.... only slightly hampered tonight that we have very early flights in the AM to get to Switzerland... what larks!!

...sadly we even had to leave a very loyal old fan outside the room (well. he's not that old!), as they could not get any more inside.... great for us perhaps, but annoying for him... sorry, Mark!

Great trio of destinations to come.... London, Fischingen, Esch-sur-Alzette....

Asterix the Gaul? no way Ambiorix the Belgae!

Good to meet this chap in a Tongeren square...
Ambiorix
Dead impressive..(was he good with his hands?)... and amazing to know that the Belgians had sort of forgotten him until casting about for old Belgian heroes when they became independent in 1830... and lo, here he is truly heroic to the last! He even impressed J Caesar himself...

...with suitable Christmas decoration... wonder what he'd think of that!?

Great to be back in Tongeren - the oldest city in Belgium, which J.Caesar would have known.

Lovely theatre, and good to have all of the adults in the Weerts family - sorry Jo, that's you too... an honorary Weerts!  The younger members of the family were working/playing hard!

Then on to Leopoldsburg, where we had not been for 10 years... very good to re-visit there... Peter and his team looked after us well.

A quick jaunt to The Netherlands this AM... for an early-feeling concert at 11AM.. we survived!

Another new place... De Schalm at Veldhoven... excellently warm crowd delighting in CHristmas spirit...

Steve did his Elvis, of course.... and then in the evening a full show of Elvis impersonation... we like to do warm-up for other acts....

Just one more to go tonight pre-Christmas... we are in the beautiful city of Lier... not much time to look around sadly...

We're nearly there...

Maaseik & Ternat, Belgium

Two return trips... each a pleasure to be back.

Wonderful to have singers from Gerrie Guerts' Jeugd en Muziek school here in Maaseik to open our concert... they sang for 20 minutes & were fabulous... more of them in a future blog (all for their very own)...
After that fine start the church was already set for a wonderful evening...and as you might expect in such a setting the two carols we asked the audience to join with, were terrific.
Totally different programme to 13 months ago.... of course we could add lots of Christmas music to the mix. .. and even Elvis made an appearance singing Lonely this Christmas; then he left the building.

Elvis followed us to Ternat (well, actually he was driving)... and we had another delightful Christmas evening..., a quite enormous tree at the back of the stage decorated so heavily that it fell over... luckily, the stage is deep enough that it did not hit anyone! ...and it was only in rehearsal... very secure in the performance.

Just three more Christmas concerts to go before the day itself... two in Belgium and one in The Netherlands...

Showtime première & European Christmas...

At last the Aalst première of our new Belgian show, Showtime... with Sarah-Ann as guest.
From next year it will be just the new group, but the five-part première has happened!
...and we had the ever-reliable Chris Hatt on stage, fighting off the lurgy all the while... superb to have him there!

Great success it was - the show was sold out almost as soon as the tickets went on sale, and the packed audience loved it.
Well done, Sarah-Ann, we look forward to much more in 2015 and beyond!

Christmas shows in Tienen, Zaltbommel, Milan & Overijse were all excellent too!
..a wee bit busy... lots of early AMs to avoid Belgian strikers and make sure we got to Italy and back (via The Netherlands)... but cool.
Great to re-visit Tienen, to have a cool Sunday afternooon yule in Zaltbommel (The Netherlands, in case you are not sure), and to have another great afternoon in Overijse today...
Lots of sales of CDs, songbooks and of course In/Out tea towels... good to spread the word even tho' England can hardly win a cricket match these days...

We were looked after in Milan by Ilenia and Luisa very well indeed... great to have our Italian agents around.

Very beautiful city... and we were in a splendidly central hotel... right near all the sites:

...and the concert went well too - lots of Italian was spoken & the audience laughed at the right moments... so either we were word perfect, or hilariously wrong... (or both!)

La Montanara especially well received...

The Tienen hotel had two dogs.... little and large:-

Grand old lady (well, I think so.... I did not invade her privacy to look):-

...and a wee one that modelled reindeer sculptures:-

Here is one for the Cant-TLQ archives... a picture of the old and the new!
In a bar after Tienen:- (S-A was drinking Tea.... Richard not!)

Now we are in Maaseik awaiting a return concert - we were here last year.... and a female vocal group we coached a bit then, will begin the evening... looking forward to that very much.

If It's Tuesday, it must be Belgium.... (does anyone remember that fairly drab film of the 1970s? It is true for us today!)

Can you Feel the Love Tonight (twice)?

The Royal Albert Hall & Wemmel in Belgium; two performances of Can You Feel the Love Tonight? in short succession, but different circumstances...

Firstly the RAH for Christmas with the Stars in aid of Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.... splendid evening, all accompanied and compered by Frank Renton and his excellent Brass Band.
We'd not done Can You Feel...? with Brass Band before, and a great experience it was...

Ann Reid, Patricia Hodge, Deborah Meaden, Michel Roux jnr., Julia Bradbury, Tony Audenshaw & lots more of the Emmerdale cast, Graham Le Saux (who introduced us), & Sydenham Girls choir....were all there, as well as a surprise guest Andrea Faustini from X-factor and his mentor Mel B.... (I am sure I am not the first to point out the splendidly ironic surname he has for an X-factor contestant)...
He sang beautifully... and everyone in the Hall promised to vote for him at the weekend!!

Our Festival of Carols in Two Minutes and 12 days with apt noises also brought the house down...
...wonderful evening and cause for which to make money.

...and here is the place being brought down, just a few moments after it all finished:-

 

After this splendour we quickly went down to the SW for some fantastically blue-skied and sunny hours in Bradford-on Avon... & here is proof (with a bit of a lorry on the bridge)!

 

 

Excellent concert for some old folks down there... and all had a good time!

 

Then it was back to Europe, (we're here for the next 11 days)... starting with the next Sarah-Ann Cromwell guest show in Wemmel, Belgium... Showtime all went very well!

More on this after Aalst (the première).... however...

 

Audience loved it, and we're looking forward to doing it all again in Aalst on Saturday (it's sold out, sorry!)... of course we'll fit in a Christmas show tonight first in Tienen...

Hooray...









Christmas in Deurne & with the stars...

Very lovely evening in a large church in Deurne, Belgium (near Antwerp).... Christmas concert with the splendid Chris Hatt on piano....

Lovely atmosphere... even including the singing of three Belgian carols with the audience... great to have Steve to lead this!  They made a large noise... perhaps not least so that they could keep warm... the heating was on all the time, but it is clearly a hell of a size place to keep temperate!

We ended with the Jonathan Rathbone-arranged and excellent See Amid the Winter's Snow for crazy pianist and singers... Chris was mad enough!... as he took over the carol to play Bach, Bethoven, Grieg, Gershwin underneath... a triumph!

Now it is on to the Royal Albert Hall to sing Can You Feel the Love Tonight? with brass band led by Frank Renton, as well as 12 days and Festival of Carols in 2 Minutes for a tremendous evening in aid of  Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research entitled... Christmas with the Stars.

Hope Betelgeuse is there...

Richarddämmerung - last of DE

So Richard's last three German concerts have happened...
Wangen im Allgäu, Rockenhausen & Itzehoe...

Great to be in Wangen once more (our 6th visit)... as ever a great reception and a beautiful area of Germany to spend some time... A Richard-farewell concert - with presents!

This is what a foyer of a bank can look like when it has a concert at Christmas... Sparkasse at Rockenhausen... a very delightful experience, & our first totally seasonal outing of the year..(well. apart from our Orthodox Belorussian Christmas in January!)... lots more to come.

Then it was to Itzehoe for another Richard-farewell - the final DE fling!

Lovely people again amidst excellent Christmas delights of shopping till midnight!

...and an audience member very kindly put some chocolate bears on our chairs (I am a poet, and I don't know it)... as it was St Nikolaus yesterday... We even received a St Nikolaus (in chocolate, natch) from the organisers... yum!

Now it is on to Belgium for our Belgian Christmas extravaganza (with a bit of Italy and the Netherlands too)... Deurne this evening where we are very pleased to be joined by pianist-extraorinaire, Chris Hatt...

Our first (of many) Christmas Markets.... Bayreuth to begin with...

Great concert here; wonderful to have Six Pack stalwarts... Markus Burucker (taking time off from being a rock-bass-God) and the ever-reliable Christian Potthast (on sound) looking after us... as well as Marcus #2 on lights... great team!

Another enthusiastic, friendly audience in Germany... how excellent.  This was a Farewell Richard concert & the atmosphere was suitably warm for such an occasion.  

Markus: Good luck with the Huebnotix gigs - 14th, 19th & 20th December in Bayreuth - 50 years of rock (with strings too!)...

Next for us it is on to Wangen im Allgäu and then our first Christmas outing at Rockenhausen; after that, we're back to the UK (for two days!)