And so another Festival is over. We had a lot of fun making it and hope you enjoyed it too. Please let us know.
Here (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/STT25D3) or at the bottom of the page is a link to an evaluation form. Please fill it out. We will base our next festival on them. In the meantime here are a couple of reviews with pictures
“Invited to enter ‘Through the Looking Glass’ to join other choirs in the Chilterns for the 9th annual choir festival, it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces lined up in the little Zoom boxes. Friends from throughout the region eagerly anticipated learning this year’s songs and we soon got into the swing with a warm-up number from Emily.
As the morning progressed, we moved onto an African inspired song from Bruce which had us swaying to the beat. As Janet and Sarah led us in further refrains, it was reassuring to hear the tracks that the leaders had prepared for each part. This made it easy to have a go at something different without anyone noticing the odd dropped note.
During the break, Roger had arranged for a compilation of previous festivals’ videos to run in the background. It was highly amusing to watch our performances on the stage, also a reminder of the many happy moments we spend singing in our community choirs.
Finally, Roger threw us a challenge with his arrangement of ‘The Lobster Quadrille’ – many opportunities here to trip up but with nobody around to notice, we could let fly with gay abandon.
As we went back through the ‘Looking Glass’, I hope you all enjoyed the day as much as I did. With huge Thank You’s to all the above mentioned plus Madeleine & Ruth for the organisational duties and Henry for the technical aspects of running the Zoom session.
It was brilliant guys – take a bow!
Frances”
“This was the ninth annual choir festival and there must have been serious considerations to not staging it at all since there could be no participants attending in person. The decision to go ahead was taken. Because singers could not interact with those from other choirs, the ninth will probably go down as the worst – but it wasn’t half good in a different way – and proved to be major boost in an unusual autumn season.
We didn’t have to get to Chinnor, we didn’t have to set the scene, make the cakes, stack the chairs, select a workshop, put up the notices, serve the teas, put the classrooms back together or remove the rubbish.
Yet we still got the five star choir leaders contributing their lively presentations and the audience was clearly appreciative. Inevitably there were glitches with Internet stability with the event being online. The connection here just didn’t happen for many minutes, then when suddenly it did, my carefully commissioned, precision-crafted silly hat collapsed before the first song.
Thanks to Ruth, Madeleine, Sarah, Henry and Pete, the event ran smoothly and it was quite an achievement to have 74 on screen at the peak. The breakout rooms worked well and there was probably enough enthusiasm to have had an encore or two.
The clips from previous festivals were very entertaining and reminded us all of the great atmosphere the festivals generated. Similarly, the intermission films were cleverly presented and well received. However brilliant this event was, we know that the next one, online or in Chinnor, will be better still. Great value too.
We value your opinions greatly they help us design future shows and workshops. Please take a couple of minutes to complete our feedback form by clicking here
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/STT25D3
CCCF9 Online Feedback by email
Dear ALL who were involved in today’s Community Choir Festival
A BIG thank you for such a Herculean technological task of arranging the online festival today! It was great fun and so nice to participate in a singing event, albeit remotely.
Best wishes and gratitude to you all
I enjoyed today’s online festival very much.
It was joyous, thank you. You barely had time to sing yourselves, so busy making sure everyone else was OK, but I hope you are all proud of what you achieved – just amazing.
I was listening to Martin Handley on 3 Breakfast this morning and he often talks about the struggles amateur singing groups are facing at the moment and that many haven’t sung at all since March. I was tempted to email and tell him about Towersey Village Voices Zoom success and the wonderful CCCF!
OH dear , thankyou so much for letting me in! I suddenly remembered at just before half past 11 ! But what I was with was superb .
Thankyou so much . Loved the videos .. need to contact friends that I saw! .
Thanks for all the work and great to see you all rehearsing .
Hope to be with you all in Chinnor next year .
Love and many thanks for being let in soo late I was choosing outfits all week !!
Thank you so much for a fantastic virtual choir festival yesterday – please extend my thanks to all the Village Voices team and to Emily, Roger, Janet and Bruce.
It was warm, witty and wonderful – really well-organised, and a joy to be part of.
Which I’m sure meant it was a heck of a lot of work to put together – so I send huge congrats to you all, and an even huger thank you.
Daaaaaahlings – what a triumph!!!
On Saturday the team was gloriously successful in presenting the festival in the most challenging of circumstances. I’m in awe of the people who have gone way beyond their comfort zones to engage with the technology and frustration and lack of feedback to carry on lighting up our lives.
That you went ahead with the festival at all is in itself impressive. But that you achieved such an engaged and fun event was phenomenal. I enjoyed every minute of it.
My appreciation to each and every one of you. Thank you for all your efforts, ingenuity and generosity of spirit. I’m fervently hoping that all will be able to return to doing what you do so well in more favourable circumstances very soon.
Bravo for Saturday’s Festival. I’m going to do more online singing.
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the event and how polished it all seemed. Obviously, there were a couple of problems but overall it was a really good time. Clearly plenty of thought and planning involved. And I thought you were having a quiet summer, not fooling about in someone’s back garden!!
Better late than never, this is to offer a huge thankyou for all the efforts that were obviously made by those designing and delivering the festival to give those of us attending a terrific time at the Community Choirs Festival.
On a personal note, it was great to see our leaders back in action again. I don’t know about the others but we have not met Emily for singing since the end of July so it was a really special day to kick off our new term which starts this evening. You know, I thought she was having a really good relaxing time over the summer, not fooling around in someone’s back garden! Ace editing job, I thought!
I was particularly impressed with the variety in the programme and I really appreciated the “nostalgic” review of the past festivals which I thought was a great idea. It was good to see again some of those who did not attend on Saturday.
All in all, many thanks as ever to the organising team. It was another triumph in my opinion.
Looking forward to next year now …
Congratulations to Sarah and her wonderful wonderland team you did a great job. Thank you all.
I had a lovely time, extra special as I could sing with daughters Emily in London and Sophie in Vietnam.
Sophie had the extra treat of seeing me wearing her top hat.
All jolly fun.
I attended the festival on my phone and wasn’t able to work out how to write a thank you message. Can you please let the team know how much I enjoyed this morning and how grateful I am that you organised it. It was so good to see all those familiar faces again and have a go at a sing song. It has really lifted my spirits. Thank you all XXX
Just to say thank you so much for all your hard work that made the choir festival possible. It was a wonderful morning and just what was needed to lift spirits.
Thanks so much for this morning: it was a great success. Very enjoyable, and an amazing amount of work must have gone into it. And what a good turnout!!
Congrats and thanks!
