 Choir Members Sing Elgar at Wolverhampton Wanderers
13 May 2007
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| Members of the Choir on the pitch at Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club |
Twenty members of the Choir had the honour of performing
for a capacity audience at Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club
today prior to the crucial Championship play-off between Wolves
and their local rivals West Bromwich Albion.
Joined by friends to bolster the numbers, the group sang Edward
Elgar's rousing Land of Hope and Glory to 28,000 football
fans who joined in and cheered loudly at the end.
Elgar was, in fact, a life-long Wolves supporter and attended
many of their home games. It is a little-known fact that he
composed the very first football chant, which was rather more
literate and free of foul language compared with a good many
chants today!
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| The Choir's very own Wolves Fan |
The performance was, in fact, recorded the day before and played
over the Wolves' sound system at the match, as there was no
facility at the ground to allow a Choir to sing on the pitch and be broadcast
over the loudspeakers. So while the twenty hardy souls really were
singing on the turf, what the fans could hear was the recording made by
the folk who'd turned up for the recording at the Friends' Meeting
House the day before - not necessarily the same people!
A very big thank you must go to Choir soprano Susie Riddell for
organising our appearance, and also to Dan Squier for recording
the performance for broadcast, John Barber for playing accompaniment
and to Mark Lawrence for conducting on the Saturday. Susie's task
was made much more complicated by the fact that the appearance had been
cancelled by the club earlier in the week, only to be re-instated
by the club's Chairman on Thursday. Unfortunately, this meant that
we weren't able to record the whole Choir on the Tuesday night, but
we pulled it off in the end and gained the Choir some very useful
publicity!
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... superb clarity and wonderful dynamics.
