On Saturday 17th June’17, 47 members of Spinnaker Chorus travelled to Dorset to compete in Bournemouth Music Competitions Festival. By car and coach we joined the queue of what seemed like thousands of people heading to the beach on a gloriously hot sunny day.
The sheer volume of traffic caused delays for our Coachettes so en route the girls frantically changed into costumes. Hilarious activity ensued with clothing flying and foundation garments on view to queuing vehicle occupants, whilst spontaneously singing warm up songs to save some time on arrival. Thankfully we did arrive with a little time to spare, filing in to the venue in a totally professional manner and joining the rest of our Chorus who were calmly gathered in our rehearsal area.
After a quick stack check and run through, dressed in our colourful shrugs, glittering jewellery and black tunics, we were ushered to the stage for the first of our five classes of the day, Show Class with Movement. Our songs in this category were Raining Men and The Moment I Saw Your Eyes. Following a hugely energetic performance we were overjoyed to be placed first.
Immediately following this we performed in the Songs from the Shows class singing Anthem from Chess and Wicked’s Defying Gravity. We love singing these two powerful pieces and hearts were pounding as we left the stage and here we achieved third place.
After a short lunchtime break and costume change to our black tunics and diamanté collars, cuffs and ties it was time for Choral and Sacred (including Gospel and Spiritual) we were absolutely thrilled to win first place especially as in previous years this trophy has eluded us. Our rousing performance of A Triplet of Trophies for Spinnaker at Bournemouth Festival Something inside so strong and You raise me up obviously made an impact on adjudicator Gaynor Keeble, whose positive critique was a pleasure to hear.
Single Voice Choir (Male or female) was next and in this we dedicated our songs to our wonderful friend and Spinnakerette Gillian Thomas, who suddenly passed away in January this year. Our emotive interpretation of Come in from the rain and Ain't no mountain high enough was well received by the audience and earned us joint 1st place with the Manx Ladies Choir. We were honoured to donate a beautiful cup for this category this year we called it The Spinnaker Trophy and appropriately Cathy Ball (Spinnaker’s Assistant MD) presented it to the Manx choir.
Our penultimate class was Barbershop where we performed the gorgeous ballad I never meant to fall in love followed by Put your arms around me honey and were awarded second place.
In Choir of the year we sang two songs from our selection already performed during the day and although we didn't win we were delighted that the title went to Signature ladies Chorus after their beautiful spine tingling performance.
So an extremely enjoyable, fun but busy day finished with three 1st place trophies, one 2nd and one 3rd place for Spinnaker, all of which were awarded distinction level. As always this was an extremely well organised event and we are very proud to have been so successful amongst many competitors of such high standard. For further information about Spinnaker Chorus please visit our website www.spinnakerchorus.co.uk or email info@spinnakerchorus.co.uk