Well it certainly has been a season of song, with a total of seven choral concerts to enjoy. And I have really enjoyed them all this year, from the extremely professional offering from Glyndebourne to five concerts given by Brighton & Hove’s talented LGBTQ+ choirs who in many ways match the talents of or local opera house, certainly when it comes to entertainment.
With so many to see and hear it is at times difficult not to compare and right now there is but a hair’s breadth between them all with, at moments, only extremes of venue temperature to divide them, and that is an irrelevant factor, he said finally thawing out.
The Actually Gay Men’s Chorus was my final outing, no pun intended, of 2024, and I cannot think of a better way to round off a year of exceptional music from within our community. The Actuallies have turned an amazing corner in what they do over the last few years, there appears to be a very solid core to the choir, faces and voices that I recognise year on year and that lends a very solid foundation to their sound. Consistency of membership it would seem gives musical director Samuel Cousins, assisted by Simon Gray, much to work with as with experience the members grow in both skill and confidence (and stop making up your own jokes at the back!).
Their Christmas programme made much of that growing talent, a balanced mix of popular song, plenty of humour and some expertly crafted challenges too. And praise should very much be heaped on both Cousins and Gray for their delightful and striking arrangements.
One thing I always enjoy about this choir is that when featuring solo voices or duos, they are for the most part, always supported in those arrangements by the full choir, not what I have decided to in future call choireoke!
This time round they also have introduced a new thread to their sound with The Octet and it leads me on to my next point about what they do. Dynamics, they use their collective skills in a dynamic way, embracing quiet, thundering when appropriate, sweet when required and shrill when necessary. They’re not just voicing a tune but telling a story, acting a lyric and effectively delivering – in every sense. It’s not perfect, of course not and even at Glyndebourne we get the odd wobble and duff note, but this is more than made up for by this choir’s real connection with the music and with their audience.
They also use the space to add another element of dynamics to their programme, voices emerging from the rear of the cavernous St Mary’s and in particular their breathtakingly beautiful performance of Away In A Manger, when the first verse was sung as a solo by Stephen Harland before The Octet, who had retreated to the altar end of the church, took up the remaining verses and sang them with a quiet confidence and gentility that took advantage of the natural beauty of the building’s acoustic. It was in that moment that I saw a star in the sky.
I could here list the entire programme but on this occasion I simply wanted to reflect on how this ensemble has grown and is still growing. We had beautiful music, comedy and a true sense of Christmas spirit, whether you are a believer or not. The soloists as ever shone bright throughout, but what I admire most about this ensemble is that sense of collective pride, of ambition and fraternity.
I say that I spotted a star and you will see it below, at the end of a row of four more.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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