Sing with The Halle

Yesterday I went to a public event at the concert hall in Manchester, called Sing with The Halle. It turned out that I was one of around 700 people who had bought a ticket for the day, to rehearse and perform Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, with the symphony orchestra. Needless to say, I was not together enough to take a camera and so have stolen the gif above from the website (www.halle.co.uk) of this, Britain's oldest symphony orchestra.

I haven't heard them play often; so have little more to add about the band, except to say that yesterday they seemed to me to be fantastically good sports.

We all arrived at the Bridgewater Hall at around 10 am, for piano rehearsal in the morning, orchestra rehearsal in the afternoon and concert early evening. The hall was opened in 1996 and the website says it holds 2,400 people. I'm pretty fond of the place already, both because it is stylish and smart and also because of good connections. I have been there a number of times to classical and other gigs, but also to graduations, since MMU holds those there, each summer. That also means that I graduated there myself, in 1997 and again in 2005, with Mum and Dad in the audience, both times. The picture above is from their website and doesn't seem to work nicely if much bigger! However, you can see lots more on their site, www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk

Yesterday was something else though. Being part of such an enormous group of people, all trying to make one musical endeavour work, was a fabulous experience. (Realising that I can still read music well enough to manage to keep up was pretty ace too!) The performance in the evening was a lovely round-off to a great day out and I will watch out for something similar in the future. It was a bit like those moments in the musicals, when everyone suddenly starts singing - and mostly we could actually do it too ;-)

And then I came home to my lovely Annie and pup, and dinner. What more could anyone ask!