RESOUND & REBELLES: Sleigh What?!
Photo from World AIDS Day concert
Resound are perhaps the most ambitious of Brighton and Hove’s community choirs, constantly surprising us with unusual and challenging choices for their programmes. Once a year of course they head to St Luke’s Church with their sister choir, The Rebelles, to deliver a seasonal offering. It is always a joyful occasion, a balance of fun and ambition, something that has to be admired.
On this occasion the fun was certainly outshone by the ambition for Resound. As a choir they certainly sound at their best when they embrace challenge. And last night those more challenging pieces shone. Reprising Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again was a great decision, a beautiful song, a fine arrangement and truly magical. Cold Moon was equally impressive and showed those voices to great effect and Turlutte Acadienne Montrealaise disproved my theory that they do serious better than fun, although as fun goes there is challenging complexity here.
Challenging came full on with an extraordinary work called Jesus At The Gay Bar, a setting of a moving poem with music by Stuart Beatch. I heard them sing this at The World AIDS day concert but this time, in a smaller space, it was so much better, more impressive and certainly the sound that Resound are so good at producing.
Rebelles have an undeniable purity of sound but can also belt it out, shifting from Morning Hymn to Hail Holy Queen from the film Sister Act proving just that. The arrangement of Gaudette that they delivered earlier in their set I liked less, the punchy interjections at the start detracting in my view from the loveliness of the rest, my view only.
I equally was left cold by Audition Song from LaLa Land, a film that I found dismally bereft of any decent songs. They sang it with conviction but following it by the beauty of Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s truly delightful Something Wonderful was in my view a huge mistake, why that gem from The King And I is not better known beggars belief.
Earlier in part two Ola Gjeilo’s Northern Lights was more like it, a strikingly beautiful piece that Resound delivered with their usual skill and magic.
In balance this was something of a curate’s egg of an evening, but cooked up by a pair of “curates” who can deliver even the fluffiest of egg dishes Sam Barton and Antonia Hyatt are a sister act to be reckoned with. Rebelles get fun so right, Crabbuckitt rollicked along for sure as did Hail Holy Queen. Resound’s Dry Bones promised fun but seemed to rattle.
Sleep as their finale was however very beautiful, the two choirs melting together so deliciously before rocking out to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, a jolly end to an = evening of musical mastery peppered with a little mayhem.
Andrew Kay
12 December
St Luke’s, Hanover
Rating:
