Concerts in 2005

• Sunday 11th December in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. We were happy to be back once again singing our Christmas music in the "St Giles at 6" series, with, as usual, a very large and appreciative audience. It could be the free admission that attracts them, but they like us well enough to buy lots of CDs. This was our last public performance for the year, although we did congregate a week later for our Christmas party with some totally different music: Jenny's frighteningly accurate rendition of her Granny's version of "Stay young and beautiful", for instance, and Sam's spectacular Nigerian drumming.
• Saturday 10th December in Rosslyn Chapel - all tickets sold, and a lovely occasion as always. Bitterly cold, but that too is normal for Rosslyn. Two Norwegians in the audience complimented us on our Swedish, but evaded the question when we asked how they had liked our new Norwegian piece.
• Wednesday 7th December: our annual concert in Priestfield Church - proceeds to the rebuilding fund that maintains this remarkable building, which celebrated the 125th anniversary of its opening on December 10th. Introducing some new Christmas repertoire, including splendid pieces from Norway, Nigeria and New Zealand, and a Plygain carol from Wales.
• Wednesday 30th November: BBC Radio Scotland's Radio Café programme used "Mary's Song", from the CD Citrus and Honey, when they were discussing the poetry of Marion Angus in their poll to find "Scotland's favourite poem".
• Saturday 26th November: singing at a wedding in Linlithgow.
• Friday 11th November: we enjoyed an evening workshop with Cathy-Ann MacPhee who taught us the words and tunes of a good number of traditional Gaelic songs (see photos). Do not suppose that the word "taught" implies that we learned them all! We did our best, and we have a good recording of the whole session, so we can go over them again as often as we need.
• Friday 21st October - singing at the ceilidh for AnnaLauren's wedding. This featured AnnaLauren's rendering of "Whistle daughter whistle". When she finally did whistle, ear-splittingly, her husband of seven hours appeared from nowhere, picked her up, and bore her away, rendering Rudsambee and the audience incapable with laughter.
• Saturday 1st October on the island of Arran, in Whiting Bay Village Hall: a programme in fourteen languages (one more than our previous record) taking us from Brazil to Macedonia, from Finland to South Africa. See the review by Moira Starks from the Arran Banner. For several of us, it was our first visit to Arran, and we loved it. We enjoyed singing to a very receptive and warm audience, albeit not a large one. It would have been larger by one if the new-found friend who paid us for a ticket in the bar of the Lagg Inn on Friday night had remembered about it on Saturday.
• Saturday 21st May: a cappella songs from around the world in Rosslyn Chapel. This was a shared concert with Soundsphere four-piece vocal group from York (there's more about them here). An excellent evening, as always at Rosslyn. It was a novel pleasure to sing to an enthusiastic near-capacity audience for the first half of the concert, and then to relax in the audience ourselves while Soundsphere delighted us with their brilliant singing and presentation in the second half. The evening was distinguished by the first appearance in public performance of Frances' stookie (that's a plaster cast).
• Thursday 5th May, in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh - a short 6pm concert, admission free, led by Anne, since Frances had had too little time to perfect the technique of conducting while balancing on one leg and manipulating a pair of crutches (see next entry). There followed an hour or so in the pub with Anna, who was back for the briefest of visits after leaving us last year to emigrate to New Zealand. After that, there was no option but an evening at Vittoria's, which kept your correspondent away from the polling station until it was too late to cast a vote in the general election.
• Saturday 30th April: Kay and Cailein's wedding. Frank conducted the service; we sang at it; Anne played the organ.
  
  In the evening, we sang more at the ceilidh, Robin danced with every woman in the choir (except those who claimed that their knees would not take the strain) and Frances got a bit wild in the Dashing White Sergeant and ruptured her achilles tendon. Frances wants you to know that this was caused by some oaf in the next set kicking her on the back of the calf, and it is a recognised common injury in Scottish A&E departments. It has a recognised treatment, too: three months in plaster, and no driving.