THE SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS IN ESK

Combined choirs - Esk Community Choir and Women in Harmony

Take a bow, Esk Community Choir! You all, together with the voices of Elaine Coates’ wonderful ‘Women in Harmony’ and the exceptional little Esk State School Band, presented a spectacle of sight and sound at the 31^st annual Christmas Variety Concert held at the Somerset Civic Centre, Esk on Sunday 5^th December. While a Christmas Special with Andre Rieu and his Orchestra will always be nothing but heart-warming, it was cited more than once by more than one of Sunday’s concert goers that the Esk Community Choir’s performance of ‘The Holy City’ had Andre’s measure unarguably hands down!! Apparently, goose bumps don’t lie!

The sun painted the sky blue for a welcome change as a near capacity audience, raffle tickets, crafts, and condiments in hand, found their places in the Civic Centre rife with a Christmas buzz. Russell Zammit’s glorious nativity backdrop, which dressed the stage, left concertgoers in no doubt of the Christmas celebration of song in store.

Cr Sean Choat

Following the customary warm welcome by emcee Councillor Sean Choat, from all directions, members of both choirs fell into places on stage. Buoyed by Margaret’s rich accompaniment, and with Musical Director Alexis poised at the music stand, the concert was brought to life with a bracket of spirited Christmas songs culminating in a very special Rhonda Polay arrangement of ‘Silent Night’, Elaine Coates’ sublime first verse solo, the perfect entree to the massed voices.

Elaine Coates

For fifteen years, Toowoomba’s multi-cultural choir ‘Women in Harmony’ has been ‘a welcoming place to share cultures through song; (a choir) dedicated to promoting harmony, understanding, acceptance and friendship through singing’. On this day it was under the masterful direction of Elaine Coates that this thirty-strong choral group who share this obsession with singing, next graced the stage. To the piano accompaniment of Helen Morris alongside, violin, piano accordion, Christmas bells and an assortment of percussion instruments, one of which apparently required copious consumption of undetermined liquid refreshments for its creation, the women, in harmony, presented a trio of beautiful songs from other lands to delight the audience.

Women in Harmony Choir under the baton of Elaine Coates

Ruth Skippen and Suzanne Clemence

In a celebration of the skills of Esk Choir’s trio of instrumentalists, flautists Suzanne Clemence and Ruth Skippen, together with the indisputable expertise of Alexis on piano, the performance of the Johann Christian Bach composition, ‘Diverstissement’ was a musical tour de force and surely a collaboration which will continue to enchant audiences into the future.

So many of the joys of Christmas are brought to us by children and under the direction of Bandmaster, Adam Smith, the fine little musicians of the Esk State School Band charmed concertgoers with their delightful Christmas tunes though at ‘Louie Louie’, a handful of audience members were powerless to resist the urge to get up and dance to the beat of the music.

Esk State School Band under the baton of Adam Smith

Mary Lightfoot’s ‘Cantate Hodie’ translates as ‘Sing Today’ and that is just what the men of the Esk Community Choir did brilliantly after which, together with the Ladies of the Choir, Margaret’s perfect piano accompaniment augmented by the Choir’s own Suzanne on flute, the audience was spirited away with two of Christmas’ stunning songs of praise, including Stephen Adams’ ‘The Holy City'.

The combined Octet

An unscheduled intermission to attend to a slight hiccup at the control panel allowed for the drawing of some magnificent raffles and a respite for refreshments after which four members from each choir came together for an harmonious octet rendition of ‘The Cradle Rocks in Glory’. Then in a celebration of choral singing, under the direction of Elaine Coates, to Alexis’s consummate accompaniment, the combined choirs filled the stage with an homage to some of the great composers, Mozart, Rutter and Adolphe Adam, a perfect finale by two great choirs to a wonderful audience who came to enjoy an afternoon of inspiring performances.

Alexis

‘I’m coming over, are you ready?’ ‘Hello, what’s your name?’; 'That was wonderful!’ After what has been a long pandemic pause, what a joy it was to be able to welcome people back to the afternoon tea tables to mingle, to reach out to friends and chat over a cup of tea with cake and sandwiches. That amongst so much this day was something to celebrate.

To deliver a perfectly polished performance on stage, many behind-the-scenes facets must happen which go unheralded. To this end, for their brilliant skills with sound and lighting must go many accolades to Chane and his brother-in-law John Caffin whose talents magnified the spectacle of sound and sight for both performers and audience alike. To Elaine and her ‘girls’, how soul-stirring are the sounds of a massed choir? Thank you for coming. We hope that the music this day touched your heartstrings as much as it did ours. Finally, but never least, thank you Alexis for awakening us all to the joy of singing so that we will never be the same.

By: Sue Walker

Special thanks to Donita Bundy for capturing today’s event in pictures.