It was indeed a divine night, hosted by May and Dave at their beautiful home. Great to see so many of you there. After our warm up we dived straight into learning the new harmonies in the simplified arrangement of O Holy Night. With the individual parts that I’d recorded for you as rehearsal aids on my trusty iPad we split off into section rehearsals – thanks to Alex for taking the tenors through their lines and also helping the altos with theirs. The sopranos were spirited away by me into May’s kitchen where we we note-bashed their part successfully. The altos converged in the convservatory and the men stayed with Alex in the piano room. The progress we all made was amazing as when we met up to sing together everyone had learnt their lines beautifully and when we sang through O Holy Night it sounded divine. It’s going to be even more so when we put our bass line in (sadly our basses couldn’t make it last night but we’ll see them on Sunday at choir practice hopefully.) I’ve emailed you each your individual parts and also put them up on the website under “rehearsal aids.” Whenever you have the time, please go through them time and again as practice makes perfect! We rounded off the evening with the Hallelujah and managed to sort out the end section coming out of the chorus in harmonies and singing the last few Hallelujahs in unison. We were being stumped by a dotted crotchet and thanks to Alex’s beady eye we realised where we were going wrong – we struck off the last “jah” and it flowed quickly and effortlessly into the unison line (thank you maestro!) We’ll be going through “The First Nowell” and “Starry Night” (for the 7th December carol singing in the market place) next. We sang these last year at the Crib Service and it will be good to refresh our memories and also for those who weren’t singing with us then, we can learn them afresh. Again all the individual parts are up on the website under rehearsal aids and I photocopied the score for you a couple of weeks ago. Anyone who needs copies just let me know please. Thank you all for a really superb effort at rehearsals. Your hard work pays off aplenty. Onwards and upwards! See you on Sunday. Helen