The Waiapu Cathedral Choir concert “Welcome to Spring with the songs we love to sing” on Sunday September 23 is a fundraiser for new choir robes.
The concert programme has been created from suggestions made by choir members - literally a hit-parade of their favourite music.
The eclectic selection includes music from the Elizabethan era, more contemporary American songs by Lauredsen and Whitacre, and a vocal adaptation of Samuel Barber’s famous and beautiful Adagio for Strings. Two lively Spirituals - When the Saints and I Got a Robe - will get the feet tapping. Compositions by French and German writers, a familiar hymn, Abide with Me, and majestic anthems They that go Down to the Sea in Ships and I Saw the Lord are favourites from the choir’s regular Sunday repertoire.
And I Got a Robe is a very appropriate song for this concert as it’s a fundraiser for new red robes (cassocks) for the choir. The current ones are now more than 40 years old and well-worn. Two of the adult choir members began singing choral services here about 50 years ago as children wearing miniature versions of the red cassocks. So time for a refresh.
A local dressmaker has been contracted to make 35 new robes.
