Singing at Home opportunities

My inbox has been flooded with opportunities to sing at home during the lockdown. Granted, it's absolutely not the same singing alone in front of your computer, and my heart yearns to sing with my choir here in church again, but in the current situation I have found them a reasonably good alternative!

Most of these options are linked from the home page of this blog, but to update you all on some exciting new opportunities I have included the following update:-

Stay at Home Choir
I admit I wasn't sure about this opportunity initially, but their third project has just been announced and I suspect it will interest many like me.

Who wouldn't want to sing with Sir James MacMillan (Composer of "A New Song" no less...) and The Sixteen? As each week goes by this Choral project matures and takes shape, it's developing into a musical, fun, stimulating and satisfying online opportunity.

The Rodolfus Foundation

The Rodolfus Foundation runs residential choral courses for young people: the Junior Courses are for children aged 8-15 and the Choral Courses for young people aged 16-21. An extension of the choral courses is the Rodolfus Choir, an auditioned youth choir that performs at major venues and records CDs. Usually a choir you would only dream of joining, they are currently taking submissions for a Virtual Evensong. You may submit video or audio entries, and our choir certainly is well prepared to participate!

The introit has already been recorded, but there is still the magnificent Dyson in D Magnificat, Victoria Nunc Dimittis, Smith responses with Stone Lord's Prayer, Parry's "I Was Glad" and Naylor final responses. There is a video with the Foundation's artistic director, Ralph Allwood conducting, separate organ accompaniment and music score PDF to download, and it's very simple to get started. So what are you waiting for! There is more info here and a taste of the Dyson in D Mag with the current submissions, including an audio only one from me! 

St Paul's Cathedral

Lastly, if you just fancy a bit of hymn singing, St Paul's Cathedral are running a "Hymn Flashmob" which works in much the same way. I found this a good way to get started, the Rodolfus project requires significantly more brain power (and counting!!!) and I was a bit rusty at first. I highly recommend this option, whether you miss singing the hymns of the season, or simply want to get ahead with remote recording projects or (the best reason of all) just want to keep singing.