I expect lemons have been in your life nearly all year, dear reader. Who has not been affected by Covid 19? Looking back at the year, I realise that Covid 19 by constraining us, forced us to take new opportunities. One of those has been online choirs. Choirs are considered to spread the disease easily because members sing so close to each other that they share air droplets and infect each other, so choirs have been banned. Some existing choirs went on line for Zoom rehearsals. I know one good choir, and one pants at the Zoom thing. It depends on how the director sets it up, looks at the camera, manages the sound technology. And some choirs started up for the first time. One good new choir was The Self Isolation Choir, started with the intention to teach and sing The Messiah, and then everything would go back to normal again. Everything has not yet gone back to normal, and the Self Isolation Choir is still here. It has grown from a few hundred members to several thousands, from the Bristol region it started at, to international. I had never sung The Messiah before, have learned to sing it, including the long bouncy bits and the high Gs. Then the SIC offered a summer school of a variety of choral music, most of which I didn’t know. I’d not heard of Rutter! Then they offered more courses in the autumn, requiems, Elijah, and then Christmas songs. If you want, you can record yourself singing your part, upload it, and their wonderful technicians wave some magic wand that hides the page turning rustles and high note screeching, producing a blended harmonious tune from all the sopranos, altos, tenors and basses together.

This evening we have a performance from 17:00 UTC-19:00 UTC, of Christmas at Home with nine carols,  publishing our recording on YouTube live at https://youtu.be/P53dr0Jo40s.  Tune in and enjoy it.