Cooma Harmony Chorus singing at the Cooma Music Competition 2006

The chorus is for women and men. We are a secular choir who sings unaccompanied music of all kinds, medicine in two or three parts. We have been going for about thirteen years and while we sing for the love of it, we also perform on average about once a month at all kinds of town events. The first month you attend is free and after that we charge $15 dollars a month.

We have a dedicated committee who handles the general organization, money, rent, costumes, birthdays etc and a secretary, Jane Reed who writes a wonderful newsletter on line. We will give her the wherewithall to put it on here. Not me of course but a delegate from  the next generation.

Performances

Our first engagement of the year looks like being the 27th of March, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Lambie Street Preschool.  Stephanie Hann is organizing it and her vision is something like this:

• Children who have been making lanterns at workshops gather at the Royal Hotel, dressed in white robes, carrying said lanterns.
• The Monaro Strings and Winds is playing outside the pub lovely wafting  music.
• The children follow the recorder player, surely our own Rowena Evans, and her drum playing mates down the street, passing en route our Hannah Spencer playing  her harp under a large tree. (The children will be distracted from thinking of the pied piper by accompanying parents.)
• At the far end of the street will be the Cooma Harmony Chorus welcoming them with songs that portray childhood in a positive light.  (I will definitely change this message when I leave my son’s company).

So I’m thinking We Are, the wafty overlappping one we did some years back. I have the words but am having difficulty finding a complete version of the music. If anyone has one, and it is a number of pages long, I would be grateful if you could get it to me. Apart from that, we might still have the Owl and the Pussycat and I can arrange some children’s songs, depending on what Stephanie would like, and our lullabies would be suitable as well – La Mar and All the Pretty Little Horses. I would particularly like to make a lantern or two so I’ll keep you posted. Rumour has it  Kevin Hambly will have full sized lantern horses, so this is our chance to do something equally not usual.

More singing possibilities this term:

I think the airport opening will still happen this autumn, and I have Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, the band version, to arrange. (Yeah, I’m on it.) I am open to other  suggestions like Up in the Air I Fly, etc. I have a list.

Also there is Easter. I have said we are a secular choir and so we are but there are some beautiful chorales by Bach that we could use during the Easter season at any concert. Now that we have tenors and basses, some music is available to us which wasn’t before.

There is also a peace festival that happens in autumn in Canberra which we may be singing in, and Roslyn knows of a thing also. The Cooma Music Competition is tentatively Sunday the 31st of May. No doubt more will come. I am in the process of choosing and preparing repertoire so do let me know early if you may need us.