Monday 23 March 2015

An evening of indulgence!

To Spencer House on Green Park, a magnificent 18th-century Palace for an evening hosted by Credit Agricole...

Here's the room in which they dined, and we performed:



Amidst a sea of wonderful paintings and sculptures, we sang for the bank and their guests - the London editors of the French media - after their having watched the Rugby at Twickenham...
Delightfully everyone stayed in a good mood & we only crowed a little bit about the wonderful 55-35 scoreline!  ...and only made one comment about then French side missing someone akin to Jonny Wilkinson - gloriously his name fitting in the space of  a lyric from the song Harley Davidson!
Surely you all remember that Brigitte Bardot hit... No??

We were singing songs in honour of the outgoing boss Jean Paul Chifflet... two of his loves being his vines & his Harley!  So we sang a folk-song, Le Vigneron & the bike song!

Everyone at Spencer House was efficiency and politeness itself; a splendid time was had by all.



Monday 2 March 2015

Fantastic Belgian times...

Excellent three concerts in Belgium at the end of last week... following our CARA award nomination for Best Classical Album last week!

Firstly Hold That Tiger! at Opwijk, where we were last at Christmas 2011.
Lots of vocal groups were paid tribute to, and a great time was had by all...
Splendid singing form the crowd in The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Excellent view from my hotel window (tho' I did have to lean out a bit!)



More great Lion singing the next morning at St Bavo school in Gent (or Ghent, if you like).... a huge crowd sang along in both that and the flag-waving land of Hope & Glory, as we gave them a shortened version of Best of British (well, they did have to go to some lessons as well that day).
The most enthusiastic joiners-in we have ever had, but there were 500-ish of them and they are full of youthful energy!
Steve marshalled the Flemish speaking with aplomb, of course.

Then it was off to Geel for a full Best of British show... and glorious it was.

.... indeed, another beautiful Belgian city:



For both the B.O.B. shows we were joined by pianist Paul Plummer - lovely to see him again, and great he was free for us amidst his travelling musician life!

Three wonderful concerts with Sarah-Ann... great times are ahead!