This is why I sing

I now sing with two f2f choirs and an online one. Why? because I was born Catholic.

I sing in the local Anglican church because it's high mass, which means we learn a lot of ancient choral music. Someone who used to sing there told me they needed sops so I joined for the Friday rehearsals. That was someone in Next Stage Choir who knew I live near this church. I was in NSC because Fionnuala used to play the piano for its director, and she told me he was opening an Aylesbury branch. F plays the organ at the local RC church, and my daughter was there at a service when Fionnuala told her that the church choir needed singers, whereupon my daughter volunteered me. I'd given up going to services years earlier but I like to sing, so I let them twist my arm and I sang at the Saturday evening mass (A view from the pew) until lockdown when the choir atrophied and never restarted. But by then I'd joined NSC Singing it's a wonderful Christmas)). In lockdown someone in a locl choir told me of a newly formed online choir, (https://ejh2.blogspot.com/2020/10/singing-in-isolation-and-singing-in.html) now called HomeChoir, which is fun and amateur and lighthearted and you learn a few songs, folk, and pop, and church and made up and maybe send in recordings. HomeChoir spawned Choir of the Earth, which encouraged us to sing parts, record and upload them so their techie people can make a concert performance of all our voices. Choir of the Earth has taught me the Messiah and Memories of music: the Hallelujah chorus), Elijah, Bach, Beatles, Abba songs, Haydn's the Creation, opera choruses, Rutter, Bryd's Mass in five voices, and recently, we're learning Joanna L'Estrange's beautiful adaptation of Vivali's Four Seasons.

Both choirs, NSC and Choir of the Earth and arrange trips to perform in various places. NSC has been to the US & Canada, Arizona, Germany and is planning a trip to Finland in November. Choir of the Earth is planning a performance in Leipzig and is advertising a course in Lincoln cathedral next January - I might sign up.

But I wouldn't be in CotE and NSC and St M's choir, if my daughter hadn't been talking to the RC church organist because I'd been born a Catholic.