Welcome Back

It's been so nice seeing you all this week. Even though we've had lots of events during our mid-term break, I've really missed the fun of the rehearsals.

The first verse and chorus of I Want It That Way are hopefully starting to bed in for you now. It's not especially tricky to sing, but it is quite hard to memorise so if you get a chance to have a few listens to your part in the Downloads Area below, that will help to consolidate the work we've done.

This coming week we'll be learning verse two and the bridge before hitting the final outro section the following week.

Kim, one of our lower altos at Bury St Edmunds, has been teaching her work colleagues Driving Home For Christmas for their company promotional video. She's going to bring some of them along to sing through it with us this Monday so we'll make that this week's Hot Hopeful.

Lyrics are in the Downloads area as usual and you'll also find a video of Kim and her folks singing it through.

Giant and Jump

Lyrics for Giant (our final song of this term) and Jump (which we'll do next term) are currently in production so they'll be in the Downloads area, along with the tracks, very shortly.

As always, thank you to Sarah for her wonderful work preparing the lyric sheets for us.

Bossy Ed

As you know, I'm not fond of bossing you about too much!

However, quite a few of you have asked me to be a bit sterner at rehearsals with regards to chatting. So, if you are able to dial it down a touch whilst you're not actively learning your parts, that'd be terrific.

On a vaguely connected note, I'm going to try to give a little bit more direction about where you might stand at gigs. I'll attempt to organise this such that we have taller people (and those that want to use their lyrics) at the back, and smaller people at the front.

So instead of bundling everyone on to the stage and then trying to move you about, I'm going to ask you to organise yourselves into your voice parts before you come on to the stage so we can make things both a little neater looking and also make sure everyone in the choir can see me.

Upcoming Gigs

Our gig at Moreton Hall is full up but do get in touch if you'd like to join us and I'll add you to the cancellation list.

December is starting to look rather busy now, particularly in Ipswich.

We'll be singing at Ipswich Rugby Club for their Christmas Grotto event on the afternoon of Sunday 15th December. We'll be doing our usual set of songs, plus some sing-along Christmas favourites.

This will be an excellent warm up for our gig on the following Friday (20th December) at Ipswich Sports Club where we'll be doing much the same sort of repertoire.

In between those two events, on Tuesday 17th December I'm really pleased that we've been asked to sing at St Elizabeth Hospice's "Light Up A Life" celebration.

We'll be leading the assembled company in a rousting sing along of Silent Night and Ding Dong Merrily On High as well as singing, by special request, our version of Bring Him Home. I played the video of our performance of this (at Croxton Church in October) to the organisers and they absolutely loved it.

Christmas Dinner

Details of our Christmas Dinner Events are in the Calendar section. We're having a joint meal for Bury St Edmunds and Thetford on Monday 9th December at Thetford Golf Club. And on Tuesday 10th December we'll having one for our Bungay choir at The Wine Vaults, in Beccles.

Sign up for both of these in the Calendar section below by hitting the button marked Social.

I'm sure you're completely fed up of being dragging along to events by me so it's really nice that these are organised by Carolyn and Judith. Many thanks to you both.

I'm thinking we might organise something similar for Ipswich on Wednesday 11th December so if you have any suggrestions of where you might like to go, or if you're a budding party-planning, then do give me a shout.

WhatsApp

A quick clarification with regards to our WhatsApp groups.

There are two whatsapp groups for each location. The first, which you should definitely be on, is used only for communications from me. For example, in the hopefully unlikely eventuality that I can't make a rehearsal, I'd send a message there. You won't be able to respond which means it shouldn't be pinging at you very often.

The second group is a more traditional please to chat and all members of the group can get involved here, or not!

The links to join the various groups at above in the Useful Information section.

Hoodies

Finally, just a quick thank you to everyone who has bought a hoody. I hope they're keeping you nice and toasty warm.

We're now sold out of the first batch and will be ordering some more very soon. If you'd like one, please do jump on our shop and place your order so I can make sure we get one in your size.

Go to popclubchoir.uk/shop

Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments. You can email me at ed@popclubchoir.uk, or whatsapp, call or text on 07973 110075. Or hit me up on Facebook!

Ed X