Success upon Success!

Earlier last week members of Swindon Male Voice Choir were proud recipients of a ‘Pride of Swindon’ Award, presented by The Mayor of Swindon, Steve Wakefield on 14^th May to honour the personal commitment of the choir and its members to the local Swindon Community.  Now celebrating its 90^th year the choir’s members were proud to have been nominated and to receive such a prestigious and personal award.

Following the presentations the choir met at Immanuel Church for a choir rehearsal. A final rehearsal culminating many weeks of learning, practice and choral instruction to participate in two choral classes at the Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts.  The choir was entered into two classes, namely the class for Male Voice Choirs and the class for choirs performing sacred music.

The first competition was the Sacred Music class, featuring four choirs.  Swindon Male Voice Choir was drawn to sing first, and presented an unaccompanied arrangement of ‘My Lord, What a Morning’ and ‘Amen - This little light of Mine’ – two widely contrasting pieces of music. A very high standard was presented by each of the choirs and competition was very close.  The competition adjudicator John Pomphrey spoke very highly of the choir and the standard it has achieved in performance and presentation of its music.  When it came to the final decision, Swindon Male Voice Choir were named the class winners and awarded the ‘Lily Ames Memorial Challenge Cup’.  A very proud win for the choir indeed! 

The choir then had to regroup, compose themselves and participate in the Male Voice Choir section, and this time presented three contrasting items from their wide and varied repertoire.  Again the adjudicator John Pomphrey was highly complimentary, giving particular praise to the choir’s Musical Director – Max Brockman-More – for the high quality he had achieved with the choir, comments warmly welcomed by the choir.  The Choir were awarded the Cheltenham Orchestral and Choral Societies Challenge Cup as winners of this class.

The climax of the day surrounded the competition through the evening session of Male, Female, and Mixed voice choirs for the award of the Festival Gold Cup for the overall best performance of the day.  The Choir having been highly praised through both of their classes we highly expectant, but it was not to be, the Gold Cup being awarded to a very high quality Mixed Voice Choir. 

Highly delighted and elated members of Swindon Male Voice Choir proudly brought the two trophies they had won back to Swindon , having made a notable achievement to denote the choir’s 90^th anniversary year. 

Members of the Choir extend their thanks and appreciation to the Chairman, members and volunteers who make the Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts for organising such a very high standard Festival.

Having completed this achievement, the Choir meets again on Monday evening (18^th May) for a rehearsal and will be making final preparations for their Concert tour of North and Southern Ireland .  Leaving on Thursday 21^st May, the choir will be presenting concerts in Bangor , Lisburn, Sligo, Carrick on Shannon and Ballinteer - near Dublin .  A very busy schedule, but one the choir is very much looking forward to.  During the trip the choir will be meeting in concert with Donaghadee Male Choir and with Queens Island Victoria Male Choir.  The tour is self funded by the choir members and the five concerts all support individual charities local to the area of the concerts in Ireland . 

Gordie Smith

Concert Secretary

Swindon Male Voice Choir

07793 406434

01793 822495

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