There are few things that bring me more joy than the opening bars of Let the River Run, and this year’s A-May-Sing saw us open the whole concert with that song. It had been a long and complicated set, and we’d had to work incredibly hard to get to the point where we were ready for the concerts, so to have finally made it brought a sense of relief as well as pride!
Morning preparations saw the Civic looking lovely for our first guests of the day, residents from local care homes arriving by minibus and taxi, being wheeled in to place by lovely carers and staff. Around forty invited guests enjoyed a shortened concert and a cup of tea and cake, allowing us to thoroughly soundcheck and warm up, and them to have the chance to see the choir in action. 
After a short break we found ourselves in front of our hundred strong audience, ready to launch in to Let the River for the second time that day. I don’t know if it’s because it’s one of the first we learned after lock down but that song just seems to resonate with us as a choir, and it’s always one we do really well. We followed that with a couple of Queen numbers just to work the band extra hard- We are the Champions and the lively Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Things took a darker turn with the men exercising their lower registers in the intense Daylight, which Kate had arranged for us, and we softened things off again with the beautiful and haunting Fields of Gold. ReMix were next, with the Stave’s Wisely and Slow, which Lotte and Alice had arranged for us, and we followed that with Sir Karl Jenkin’s Adiemus, and World in Union. Whitney’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody had the audience up on their feet, and we finished the first half with the Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star. As well as being extra hard work for the band, many of the first half numbers had small solos sung by choir members, and it was a real team effort. 
After a short interval the plan was the choir hung around casually at the sides of the audience whilst the band did Geno. Which sort of worked! The band did indeed do Geno with Paul on vocals, and Lotte, Shaun and Tim on brass, it sounded amazing!!
The choir came back to do the ultra cool Feel it Still (hee hee hee ha ha ha ha ha!) followed by the absolute classic Mr Blue Sky, and Reflect kept the sunny theme going with the atmospheric Cape Cod! Stevie Wonder’s You Are the Sunshine of My Life had a laid back groove, and the celebratory theme continued with McFly’s It’s All About You. 
What a Wonderful World is another absolute favourited of the choir, and we sang that leading in to the stunningly beautiful For Good from Wicked, with incredible solos by Kate and Lotte. 
An attempt to keep our final number low key was thwarted by no less than eleven musicians taking part, enhanced by a plethora of flags and percussion, as the whole audience joined in with Those Were The Days. And we really felt that these were, in fact, the days, as we finished our day on a massive high!