The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

If anything were needed to prove the Kids Are Alright, the Junior Choir’s performance at the Barney Rodgers Memorial Recital did just that. (And might your reviewer modestly mention she was one of the few people to identify the cuddly creature Barney was holding in the photo as a Wombat?)

One of the most attractive aspects of watching the Junior Choir is their bond with David Moore. You can see they’re not only trying their best for themselves, but for him, because they like him.  If he suddenly asked them to try Bach’s B Minor Mass, I am perfectly sure they’d have a go!
They began with a piece they know – “O Salutaris Hostia” by Delibes, better known for his ballet music, such as Coppélia.  It’s nicely bedded in and it ran very well.  For me, their biggest success was “Father God in heaven, hear our prayer”.  This was proper choir singing, in parts, and as the church gradually grew darker in the soggy autumn evening, the voices floating were really touching.  “Ave Maria” by Cousins is also rapidly becoming a party piece and deserves an outing.

And then, the solos.

We started with one of Purcell’s charmers, “Ah how pleasant ‘tis to love” sung by one of the Singing Fitzpatricks, in this case Louise.  Very bright and fresh it was too. Next Lorenza Michelucci-Dunn managed to surprise me, and I suspect a lot of other people, by coming  up with “My House” from a musical called “Peter Pan” by Leonard Bernstein, of which I’d never heard.  She gave us a charming introduction to the show.

Here come the Fitzpatricks again!  This time, it was Evelyn singing a piece which cannot fail to be touching “God be in my head”.  When she got to “God be at my end, and at my departing” it was really poignant.

This really was a family show!  We now had Alessandra Michelucci-Dunn singing a far more sophisticated challenge “The Owl”.  Owls are rather popular in songs.  She negotiated all the tricky bits, and came out happily at the end!

We now moved on to our Head Chorister, Victoria Scott-Linden, and it wasn’t hard to see why she’s got the job.  “Sweet and Low”, which she sang, was just that.  She has some surprisingly rich lower notes, and I’d never be surprised if she turns into a mezzo-soprano.

And last of our soloists was Dominique Daeschner, who had the most difficult song of all “Greenfinch and Linnet Bird”.  It was even a tricky accompaniment for David!  But not to worry, it all worked, and it’s a song I’d like to hear again.

With David doing a solo (a versatile lot our music staff!) we couldn’t have had a more appealing ending than all the choir holding candles, singing “Thank You for the Music”.  We could very well have sung it back to them!

And then there was wine.  And cake!  And Alex Saikia was a very suave butler, passing it round.  And then we all went home, humming the tunes.