‘Somehow we even managed to fit in free time and a Saturday evening entertainment.’
Lady’s chamber: Barbara Parry attends a Friends’ musical weekend
It must be more than twenty years ago that I first took part in the annual Quaker Choral and Chamber Music weekend at Charney Manor, where singers and instrumentalists of all ages gathered to sing, play and live together for a weekend of intensive musical and spiritual fellowship. A lot of serious work goes on behind the scenes to make these weekends a success: accommodation for living, singing, playing and worshipping is carefully arranged; applications are monitored to ensure a good balance of voices for the choir, and instruments for the chamber groups; choral music is prepared with attention to quality, variety and a sense of what can be achieved in one short weekend; and the instrumentalists are allocated to a different group for each ninety-minute session, so that the overall experience of each participant is as varied as possible.
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