Montabaur - Folk & Fools Day

Folk & Fools?
...which were we? (perhaps both!)

We shared a Folk and Fools evening at the Mons Tabor Stadhalle in Montabaur, Germany with the hilarious French duo... Duel; and the Irish folk band Caladh Nua....

Another terrific German audience embraced us all... they came in the hall before 7PM and left after midnight!

This great evening's journey was started by us taking the crowd from Henry VIII (and his Pastime with Good Companye) to Cricket Tea Towel - The Rules of Cricket; from a 16th-century Pavane (Belle qui tiens ma vie...) to the Tiger Rag... With a Little Help from My Friends...
From the off, they were a splendid crowd and they continued supporting all three acts that evening!
Splendid warmth emanated from the hall & it was an excellent experience!

Duel are a quite hilarious and inexhaustible pair of brilliant french guys... a cellist and a pianist who can really play... and can really mess about too... splendid... with a fine line in crazy percussion & props! They brought to mind both our old friends, the English duo, The Cambridge Buskers & the excellent French act, Le Quatuor... but these chaps are wonderful in their very own way! (Just realised that the two acts I just mention and TLQ were all born within a few years of one another:- what a fecund time for comedic classical acts!)

The evening ended with the vibrant full-folk Irish sounds of Caladh Nua...

Local photographer Gregor Eisenhuth took wonderful photos of the evening... and they can be found here.

Now it is beginning to look (and sound) a lot like Christmas....

Heilbronn Heights

Another excellent shared a cappella gig with other wonderful groups... this time: the beautiful Medlz & the terrific mundARTmonika...

A lovely evening, once again introduced and organised by our friend, Peter Martin Jacob...

I know it sounds strange but this took place in an arts space in a bank!  No, really... it was an excellent place to sing, and the big audience loved it all... We were in Unter der Pyramide within Kreissparkasse (yes, that's the bank)... all glorious!
This is a great tradition in Germany... we did a Christmas concert in a bank last year; rather than having art in them, our large UK banks are being turned into pubs and estate agents (one of those seems more useful than the other!)

The Medlz were their glamorous and musically strong selves as ever & mundARTmonika sang with fire and fun...
We went down well too... a great evening of AHA a cappella!  The audience joined in excellently with angry percussion in Rolling in the Deep and beauty in The Lion Sleeps Tonight!

All three groups joined together at the end to sing an improvised version of Stand By Me... and the audience (or lots of them) did!

Here we are summoning up the energy to give it to them! (Bunny ears from Sabine!)

Tonight in Montabaur, we perform in a Folk and Fools evening (which are we?)... with Irish folk band, Caladh Nua, & a terrific pair of French fools, Duel... all shall be fantastic!

Friday the 13th joys in Scunthorpe...

We did indeed have a splendid time in sunny (well a bit windy and rainy too) Scunthorpe...

There was even a world-première...
We gave the first ever performance of our a cappella arrangement of Quia Respexit Humilitatem from the Bach Magnificat; clearly Sarah-Ann had done this before & sung it beautifully, but our vocal noodling behind her had never previously been heard in public!

Scunthorpe Concert Society had been very brave and invited us back after only an interval of 15 years...
...and we sang in an excellent Performing Arts School, with great rehearsal facilities etc and a very good hall in which to sing.
We took the audience on the journey from Madrigal to McCartney, from Henry VIII (his Pastime with Good Companye) to Richard Rodney Bennett (his glorious A Good-Night from A Garland for Linda).

A delightful evening, with audience not only of people of a certain age; it was very good to see some young faces in the crowd too... But all of them, whatever age, were terrific and enthusiastic.
They also loved Chris's and our singing of California Dreamin' and When You say Nothing At All...

We hope Scunthorpe Concert Society goes from strength to strength...

The evening was only blighted by the disastrous news that started appearing at the end of the night of the appalling debacles in our beloved Paris... horrendous; what barbarity.

We are back in Lincolnshire on Wednesday the 2nd of December at Grantham....details here.

I wandered past the North Lincolnshire Museum on the way home... and found this old lady...

...and perhaps one of her mosaics!

Out to Germany at the end of this week.... Heilbronn & Montabaur;- all info on site...

Wunderbar!