SUCCESS, YET AGAIN, AT GODALMING MUSIC FESTIVAL 2008!
The Godalming Music Festival takes place annually, attracting around 2,000 entrants in the three categories of Music, Dance and Speech & Drama.
It is a friendly, professionally run festival, with experienced adjudicators demanding high standards of performance and presentation of the 2,000 entrants who come from all over Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire, Sussex and London areas. The choral classes of the competition are held in the chapel at Charterhouse school which is a beautiful venue.
Once more Guildford Harmony was placed 1ST in the Barbershop category. This was despite the fact that our Musical Director, Mike Warner, missed out on directing us after being delayed travelling to the event, and our Assistant Director, Kath Roodhouse was unable to be there also due to family ill-health. However, luckily for us, Isabel Cockram, one of our very experienced section leaders, stepped into the breach at the last minute to save the day by standing in. Singing If I Give my Heart to You and Let me Sing & I'm Happy, we achieved an excellent total score of 89. The Adjudicator, Mrs Penny Jenkins, who gave some good constructive criticism at the end of each class described our singing as a really lovely, well balanced blend.
And this was to be Guildford's night, because after entering the Ladies Choral Open section this year for only the second time, we unexpectedly won that as well, despite some very stiff competition from other styles of ladies choral singing. For this category we sang The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) and O Come, O Come Emmanuel, scoring an exceptionally high mark of 90, and this time with Mike, who had finally arrived, out in front. Mrs Jenkins, who was full of praise and who obviously enjoys the "barbershop" style, again gave us some very helpful and positive feedback, and said we looked gorgeous as well!
We look forward to entering again in 2009, hopefully with a few more "Barbershop" entrants coming along to swell the ranks of competitors.
