Voices in the Wilderness

A Very Christmas Concert.

Our Christmas concert at Carclew was very special for all of us this year marking some major milestones for the choir - some amazingly amazing and others poignant and a little sad.

Our concert of Christmas music and merriment spanned the centuries from an ancient carol arranged for us by our inspirational choir director, Jodie O'Regan, to a particularly beautiful song cycle "Nativity", composed by Jodie. This piece showcased the choir with large ensemble pieces, small ensemble pieces and a glorious solo sung by Wendy Stanton.

We opened the concert with the gospel classic, "Mary had a Baby", moved through the crooning melancholy of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", and "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" sung by Emlyn O'Regan.

In the mix was Handel’s "Hallelujah Chorus" from The Messiah, a perennial Christmas favourite which sounded pretty fine and was a blast to sing. Also a pretty fine achievement for a community choir. Our guest trumpet player, David Kafaghi, accompanied the choir for the chorus and also played with Emlyn for a beautiful rendition of "The Trumpet shall Sound" also from the Messiah. Purcell's delightful duet "Sound the Trumpet" was sung by our sopranos Sally McHenry and Gisela Obst, and accompanied by Thea Maxwell on piano.

Voices in the wilderness have been singing as a choir with Jodie O’Regan for 11 years. Our concert this year showcased a mature, confident, ensemble that exudes a great joy of singing as well as a nuanced musicality and choral achievement. I think we would all say that this is because of Jodie's incredible teaching ability and choral know-how, and her very special ability to get the absolute best out of every choir member.

Sadly, this was our last concert with Jodie as our guiding star. Good bye Jodie with all our love.

The choir will embark on our next decade together in 2018 with Alex Roose as our new choir director. We are all excited to start this new choral journey together.