Altogether, nearly 1,900 people came along to our two shows on 13 December, and enjoyed the promised sparkling performances from our guests – the RIAM Concert Band, in better form than ever, the two magnificent choirs from Notre Dame Junior School and Mount Anville, and the  4-in-a-Bar barbershop quartet whose wonderfully melodious material ranged from modern Christmas favourites to the sixteenth-century Magnum Mysterium from the Spanish composer Victoria. The choir, if we say it ourselves, wasn’t too bad either: we had fun joining the RIAM band for Chris de Burgh’s ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling‘, and along with the band, the school choir and the mighty NCH organ, the finale, ‘O Holy Night‘,  brought the house down as always. It goes without saying that our inimitable soprano/compere, Niamh Murray, and our longtime collaborators, the Billie Barry Stage School, delivered performance value in spades.

We’re already looking forward to next year!

We returned on 17 October to our old stamping-ground of St John’s, Ballinteer where we finally put the Messiah into our CV, opening the concert with a performance of the first part of Handel’s great oratorio.

Our large audience seemed to enjoy that and the other items on the programme, particularly the Haydn trumpet concerto and the spiritual ‘Steal Away‘ from Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time. Our four young singer soloists, along with the seasoned professional musicians – many of them National Symphony orchestra members – of the string ensemble, and of course organist David Leigh, did the programme full justice.