Back In Harmony

Newcastle City Council’s staff choir has been going for several years and I’m a founder member. I was able to stay part of the choir when I retired and we now have a combination of retired and working members. We would meet for an hour every Tuesday at noon to allow staff to get there in their lunch break.

Choir had to stop in early 2020 when the Pandemic hit, along with all other social activities. There had been some early concerns that singing at volume might increase transmission of the virus, even if social distancing was observed, though this was later found to be less of a risk than had been thought.

After a while we began meeting on Zoom (and we’ve been doing that ever since, though it is limited to singing along to backing tracks while we muted our own voices. This avoids the cacophony that the slight time lags on Zoom would create otherwise.

Yesterday we met in person for the first time in about 18 months and it was wonderful! We did exercise caution as case numbers are still quite high here. I think we are all double jabbed with the vaccine – we were reminded to stay away if experiencing any COVID symptoms and wore our masks until we were ready to start, making sure we spread out for the session, which was held outside Newcastle’s Civic Centre. The building’s Council Chamber is a distinctive dome on stilts and it provided some shade from the midday sun during the mini heatwave that is taking place this week. It also has great acoustics.

About 7 of us, along with Emily our lovely Musical Director, were able to attend and two more members joined on Zoom. It was so good to see my choir friends again in person .We were all quite emotional about singing together after all this time and burst into spontaneous applause after our first song. It was particularly lovely to sing songs that we’d learnt online but never actually performed together in person.

There is something very special about singing in three or four part harmony. While you are singing the notes of your own part you can hear it blend with the voices singing all the parts creating beautiful harmonies together. It’s wonderful to be a part of that.

All to soon our session was over. I’m pleased to report that we hadn’t picked up too many bad habits during our prolonged period of Zooming – it still sounds great. We put our masks on for a group selfie – thanks to Teresa for taking this. We’ll be back for more weekly outdoor sessions as long as the weather is in our favour.