singing

In April, during the Easter break, our choir took us to California, essentially repaying the visit the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir took last summer. We started in Los Altos, near Silicon Valley and 40 miles south of San Francisco. Our first order of business, obviously In n Out.

We then performed a service at Stanford Memorial Church on April 6th, livestreamed here.

Then, we went north to the Gualala - north-west from Sacramento - a wildlife conservation area where people live miles away from the nearest super market and there is no mobile signal. We stayed in pairs with local volunteers and performed at a local school as well as the local Gualala Arts Centre. The wildlife there was really breathtaking, and we even found some massive shells on the beach.

In one of our breaks, we all decided to go walking in the forest and we found our way down to the Gualala river and we all went and dipped our feet in and it was really fun. The water was so clear and just the right temperature.

After our concert at Point Arena primary school, we went down to the beach and we sung Sigato on the pier. Sigato is the earliest surviving Christian Greek hymn, found on a scrap of papyrus at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. Also part of our repetoire is Phos hilaron, another old Greek hymn also found around late 3rd century CE

Coming back to San Fran, we immediately sung an evensong at Grace Cathedral, and when we arrived, we coincidentally bumped into Anna Lapwood, who is a British organist who leads opposing choir Pembroke Girl's Choir which is another Cambridge College. She was there playing the organ as a practice for her upcoming performance. It is so rare to see someone from home while being so far away form home at the same time.

After our performance, we started trundling towards our accomodations. The long, steep streets of San Francisco did not make life any easier with large bulky suitcases. Eventaully, we reached the BART station (metro kinda) and took one to Piedmont, the other side of San Francisco bay to finally meet up with our besties from PEBCC! We stayed in pairs or threes in the choir's homes, and when they came to England the summer prior, Alex and Ayla stayed at my home, so when we went to pay them a visit, me and my friend stayed with Alex.

We made it! Just in time for bed.

The next day, we headed over via ferry to San Francisco and spent the whole day walking around piers where sea lions were laying there sunbathing - so cute, looking at Alcatraz over the water, going to China Town and riding the famous San Francisco cable cars!

on the ferry, heading towards San Francisco

sea lions!!!

We had a rehearsal in the afternoon with PEBCC for our concert the next day. (find details here)

This clip is from the start of the concert, before PEBCC joined us.

I enjoyed every moment of this tour! The people, the places, and the food were all so good! Thank you so much to St Catherine's choir for such an amazing opportunity.

Every year, our choir has a Christmas Luminaria in the college and it is held on the quad, where normally only fellows can walk. We are the exception, only for this event. We sing hymns, magnificats and anthems from memory while holding lanterns. I got chosen to hold a large lantern and led the rest of the choir in this year. Our local newspaper took pictures and I ended up on the cover!

To get tickets for this year, follow this link to get your free tickets!

We sung a few pieces including 'Oh virgo ac diadema' by Hildegard of Bingen and Vivaldi's Gloria. It was a fundraising concert for our upcoming california tour (info above)

The university has released an article about it here. You can find out more about the symbolism of the concert being on the 8th of March, which is international women's day, and we sung repetoire written by women, or written for women with an all ladies choir and instrumentalists.