One of my favourite things about being a member of Cloud9 is our incredibly diverse repertoire, and our 2016 Christmas Collection Concert was a superb example of this diversity! Under the expert guidance of our beloved Music Director, Gloria, we are becoming more and more versatile as singers, and having ever more fun performing.

Looking the part with our gold and red highlights!

In our first set, we sang traditional Australian and southern African pieces, including the stunning lullaby Inanay, made famous by Tiddas. Next we sang two crowd favourites: Weep you no more and Glory to thee, my God, this night. After Laudate, with its beautiful melodies (and highly-repetitive lyrics), we were very lucky to be joined by Rowan Thomas and Ian Goding performing Haydn’s Duet for violin and cello in D major. Thank you Rowan and Ian.

Our next set comprised wonderful showtunes: we all enjoyed stepping into character for these and getting sassy! Finally, our soprano Jacqui sang a glorious solo opening to Ave Maria which we followed with two lovely nods to the Season: Angels’ Carol and I saw three ships.

Our audience was large and generous in their responses to our performance. We are very grateful to be so warmly supported by our family and friends and love hearing each time that this was ‘definitely our best concert yet!’

We look forward to coming together again on Thursday 2^nd February to begin another year of beautiful singing.

– JM, Cloud9 member

Enormous thanks, as always to our wonderful Music Director Gloria, and fabulous Accompanist, Annabelle.

Our incredibly versatile soprano Jacqui: wowing us with her solo one minute, vacuuming the next!

What a great audience we had at our winter collection concert which took the theme of adventure and travel with a touch of Shakespeare in this anniversary year. I do think that having such a warm and appreciative audience spurs us on to sing our very best. On this occasion we surprised ourselves by singing a couple of pieces even better than we had done in rehearsal.

Many people commented on the diverse choice of music and how well it worked together. It was a largely new repertoire for us this year so that has been exciting. Gloria, our Music Director, can take the credit for steering us towards works we have not done before and that stretch us as a choir. She then expertly takes us through them to get to the stage where we can perform them in public.

The Shakespeare songs set to music were just beautiful but I have to say my favourite was the lovely modern arrangement of Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day. I declare my bias though; as an alto, we got a rare opportunity to take the lead with the tune and we loved it!

Talk about flexibility though! In the two Gilbert and Sullivan pieces the choir had to change quickly from being “sober men and true” in We Sail the Ocean Blue to being “hardy little lasses …skipping rivulet and fountain” in Climbing over Rocky Mountain.

Our guest artists followed our theme for the evening with our wonderful accompanist Annabelle and choir member Gail playing En Bateau for Piano 4 hands. Soprano Alexandra Mathew delighted us all with more Shakespeare, a song of wandering and the beautiful folk song O Waly, Waly.

And for the first time we had 2 guest accompanists who are offspring of choir members. Emily on cello joined us for Over the Sea to Skye and is the daughter of mezzo Diana. Stuart played guitar with us on Mull of Kintyre and is the son of soprano Cathie. They were both terrific and added that extra special dimension to our performance. Thanks to all our guests!!

If you didn’t get to see us this time round don’t miss us next time! We already have the date for our next concert, Summer Collection 2016, so put Saturday 3 December in your diary now.

JS, Choir member

Our Winter concert is only three short weeks away and at last night’s rehearsal we could all feel things starting to come together beautifully. It’s going to be a fabulous event!

Spread the word and we can look forward to performing to a packed house again. See you there!

I am so looking forward to our mid-year concert. We sampled a range of works in the first term and now, in the second term, we are working through those selected by Gloria, our MD, for the performance we are giving on Saturday 25 June. It will be a lovely mix with a theme of travel and adventure, mixed with a bit of G&S. But as this year is the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, we wanted to acknowledge that by including some of his songs and words set to music.

Much of the repertoire for the concert is new to Cloud9 and it’s a fascinating process taking on new works. As we start to learn our respective parts Gloria is guiding us towards further developing our “musical intelligence” so that we quickly move beyond getting the notes, rhythm and dynamics correct. We are looking at the story of the piece to get a deeper understanding of what the work is about. I believe that our interpretation of the works is improving in leaps and bounds and we learning them much more quickly. For me that signals a step up in the growth and maturity of the choir which is both exciting, challenging and very satisfying. Roll on Saturday 25 June!

JS, Choir member

Shakespeare via Flickr

What a great way to sing out the year. It was a warm evening but that didn’t stop us having our biggest audience ever. We sang out to a full house; a sea of bright warm colours and smiling faces.

Cloud 9’s concert Christmas Collection 2015 was held this weekend and I think it is a signal of our growing maturity as choir and the marvelous direction that we have from Music Director, Gloria, that we went in well prepared and relaxed. It showed in our singing and was reflected back by our audience afterwards with comments such as “best concert you have ever done”, “the choir is getting better and better”.

This time we did 3 pieces in “forest formation”, that is we moved out from our rows and spread out in amongst the audience. We sang from memory and had a number of comments about what a beautiful sound we made when we mixed the voice parts round the room. We had fun doing the body percussion to Sylvie although some of us (including me) didn’t quite manage the coordination and clapped when we should have stomped and vice versa. However, it was great fun and I am in awe of the 8 members of the choir who started us off and kept the body percussion going throughout!!

Many thanks again to Gloria, our wonderful Accompanist, Annabelle, and also to guest Paul Williams aka Professor Klum who with Annabelle kept us entertained with things I didn’t know you could do musically with a clarinet! Thanks also to everyone who works behind the scenes to make our concerts happen, including sound recordists Max and Walter, and Margaret and Kevin who managed the tickets for us again this year.

JS, Cloud9 member

The end of the year is such a busy time; school exams and report writing, that pre-holiday winding up at work before you can wind down, parties and celebrations, and that whole thing around planning for the Christmas holidays. And on top of that there are the end of year concerts!

I really look forward to Cloud9’s end of year concert. We work hard to be ready at this hectic time but it doesn’t feel like work and I find it intensely satisfying. This concert always seems to have a particularly relaxed and happy atmosphere. Holding it at 5.30 in the evening means we get a few little ones coming with our families along with our regular audience members.

Rather than choosing a theme for the title of this year’s concert we have called it the Cloud9 Christmas Collection 2015. It will be a loose mix of pieces that our wonderful Music Director, Gloria, thinks will suit our voices and that our audience will really enjoy.

Yes, there will be a Christmas carol or two but we are also breaking out with a couple of show tunes, some gospel songs, some traditional pieces and a gorgeous new work (new for us that is) by renowned contemporary choral composer, Eric Whitacre.

Be ready for a surprise though, the Cloud9 gets physical this year; watch out for our newly acquired and hard won skills!

JS, Cloud9 member