Gala Birthday and amazing things happen!
The evening began with the arrival of The Mayor and Mayoress of Bournemouth, Councillor and Mrs Borthwick.
The programme that Martin had planned included a wide variety of choral spiritual, classical, joy filled and show music, along with great solos and duets - with a few fun group songs for extra measure.
The choir performed for about two hours with a break in the middle for the serving of a wonderful buffet and Birthday Cake! Thank you to the wonderful team at the Hamworthy Club for all the help, support, service and great food we received.
The evening ended with ‘The Mystery of your gifts’ sung by our Music Director Martin as a loving gift to all the members and friends of Wessex Chorus, and the choir singing the final gift of joy given by song, 'The Prayer.'
What a great Gala event, thank you to all in our team of members, helps, ambassadors, and friends of Wessex Chorus.
What a wonderful evening to celebrate our 10th Birthday. We raised over £2,500 in total to share amongst our 5 charities.
PREPARATIONS AND PERFORMANCE
SOUND
The big day started very early with cars and vans filled to the gunnells with sound and music equipment. Setup and sound testing for the large room at the Hamworthy Club took several hours and finished just in time for the arrival of the choir - then continued on 'til all the choir and soloists' levels had been checked ready for the big performance. The performance went without a hitch - a big thanks to our wonderful sound crew who worked from 10am to past midnight!
RAFFLE
Our amazing raffle!
The drawing of raffle tickets sold throughout the last year resulted in all forty-three prizes being won. The top five prizes were drawn personally by the Mayor - first prize of a week in a cottage in Brittany, worth more than £1000.
During the evening we sold more than three-thousand raffle tickets! Such kindness and generosity from everyone.
BIRTHDAY CAKE
Martyn from Cottage Loaf Bakery made us a wonderful cake that served the whole two-hundred guests.
Even though it was his own birthday he came personally to deliver our cake, so we sang him a special Happy Birthday!
As an amazing gesture of good will he presented Martin the Music Director with a cheque for the cost of the cake to put towards our charities' funds.
The choir also had an extra Birthday Cake made by one of our members, in case we didn't manage to get a slice of Martyn's - we ate it at our next Tuesday rehearsal. Delicious!
CHARITIES
It was evident that our guests were having a good time, and so many wonderful and encouraging words were passed between us.
It was a joy and music filled evening. The choir had never sung so well, each member giving so much of themselves, creating such passion and helping in our birthday celebration.
The choir raised it’s target of £500 per charity, totalling £2,500.
The second half was such fun and ended with speeches and the Mayor handing over to our five charity representatives a large cheque for £500 each.
'Gifts of appreciation’ were also presented to all the members and friends of the choir who gave so much of their time to making the day such a successful one.
