A few memories of our first ten years – I’ve pulled a lot of them from things that were written at the time, and added labelled updates as required. It’s all pretty clear!
There have also been several articles written for the village’s magazine “The Bridge”, which comes out every other month. All these have been collated together in a rather dry-looking document, which you can read here! The writing’s quite sparkly, but there are no pictures!

July 14th 2015 – Taster Sessions
What a brilliantly, thrillingly musical day! We had the first of our taster sessions for the new Felton part-singing choir this evening. It was completely exhilarating with over 30 people turning up, being enthusiastic and tuneful, including lots of locals to make friends with and lots of old friends from other choirs. We went for it with a wide range of styles and made an in-tune and sweet sound. There’s another next week so if you fancy being part of the excitement come along, why don’t you!?

July 21st 2015 – Come Again
Today has been the second of our two taster sessions for the new Felton choir for which I have been waving my arms around and being jolly. Next week is the party and in September we will start for real. But, in my opinion, we have already started for real and after a mere three and a bit hours of singing together in parts and being exceedingly cheery and hard-working, we sound pretty good on Dowland’s “Come Again” (and also The Peanut Vendor, Felton Lonnen, Banana Fanfare, Inanay and We Were Gathering Up The Roses).

November 1st 2015 – The Bridge Singers
The brand new village choir in Felton and West Thirston, of which I am the musical director, has about 30 members and so far we’re enjoying learning music in a variety of styles including some extracts from Handel’s Messiah, folk music, a selection of Dowland songs, and some Christmas items for our first recital in December. The choir also seems to like singing my pieces and arrangements which is a happy circumstance! After a few weeks of getting to know each other merrily in our cosy rehearsal space in Gallery 45, we have this week decided, after much discussion, banter and voting, that we will be called The Bridge Singers, after the historic bridge that links the two villages together.

November 25th 2015 – Press Release
The inaugural recital of brand new Northumberland choir The Bridge Singers of Felton and West Thirston is as I write this, sold out!
The concert is on Monday December 7^th at 7.30pm in Felton Village Hall and will feature a wide selection of repertoire, including madrigals by John Dowland, a summery selection from Cuba, Australia and the USA, a few popular Mediaeval numbers, at least two songs mentioning bananas, and a generous sprinkling of festive carols and songs including a world premiere by their musical director and professional composer, Cheryl Camm, as well as plenty for the audience to join in with. The choir will be joined for the occasion by Morpeth pianist Tom Cartmell who will accompany the choir and also play before the concert while everyone else jovially consumes complimentary mince pies and mulled wine.
The choir itself is one of the results of an initiative of Eileen Davidson and Alison Rushby, to get the villages singing together. It all started in April when Alison ran informal come-along-and-sing drop-in sessions at Gallery 45 on Main Street, Felton. These sessions were so popular and there was such a diverse range of people from the villages and beyond that now there are two singing groups. The drop-in singing group on a Tuesday evening run by Alison is still going strong and aims to have singing fun, with a huge range of songs covered, mostly sung in unison or with some optional part-singing. The Bridge Singers rehearses on a Monday evening and also has lots of singing fun, while tackling slightly more complex repertoire in 4 or more parts with a clear aim of presenting enjoyable but quality performances now and then. The Bridge Singers has rapidly expanded to almost 40 members who come from as far afield as Cramlington, Ingram Valley, Christon Bank, but also the vast majority from our very local area.

December 7th 2015 – Inaugural Recital
The Bridge Singers’ inaugural recital, including every bit of repertoire we currently know, was a sell-out at Felton Village Hall! We sang lots of Christmas things, of course, including the world premiere of Chantry Chapel Carol, but also presented a proper mixture of folk music, barbershop, Dowland songs, excerpts from The Messiah and some short Medieval song bursts. Another of my pieces (Banana Fanfare 2) featured in our “summer selection” as well as my arrangements of “How Beautiful Are The Feet” and Dowland’s “His Golden Locks”. One reaction to our first term and recital from Alison, “I was just happy from beginning to end about the whole thing – every aspect of it. The hall looked so special, and the wine and goodies spot on. Both the programme and the programmes were splendid. It felt great to be part of the singing group – it all felt very genuine – everyone doing their best and no one shrinking back. I was staggered by the progress made, particularly as a corporate whole.”

January 2016 – Review
Take …..

• thirty to forty enthusiastic villagers and their singing friends from around the county;
• an enthusiastic willingness to have a go at a staggeringly wide range of choral repertoire;
• three months of laughter-filled, yet hard-working rehearsals;
• an eager concern with getting the musicality and technical intricacies of the music just right;
• songs about bananas, our very own street outside, beautiful feet and shopping;
• a world premiere and a clutch of Medieval catches and rounds;
• festive carols and songs to listen to and join in with;
• mince pies of delicious quality;
• 90 or so friends, family and other interested parties;
• a village hall decorated with twinkling lights, merry wreaths and other smiling beautifications;
• lashings of mulled wine (well, one glass each);
• joyful chat and banter;
• an hour’s worth of whole-hearted singing and clapping (and even cheering at times)……

…and you get the exuberant and exultant inaugural concert of The Bridge Singers in Felton Village Hall on December 7^th 2015!  – a joyous occasion of musical excellence, cheerful bonhomie and an all-round welcoming atmosphere.

May 7th 2016 – Bridges, Rivers and Other Village Friends
The Bridge Singers had their second recital yesterday, this time in St. Michael’s Church in Felton – again to a packed and enthusiastic audience. The title was “Bridges, Rivers and Other Village Friends” and our theme was music and stories related in some way to the village with readings and song. The solemn first “half” told the story of Oliver Cromwell’s passage through the villages, marching Scottish prisoners south from the 1650 Battle of Dunbar to Durham Cathedral. The 2nd part of the concert was more light-hearted with a mixture of folk, barbershop, 1960s pop classics and classical pieces. There were also two world premieres of pieces by me: “The Felton Sycamores” setting a poem written specially for us by Tony Williams, and “Alison’s K6 Telephone Box” about the box on our very own bridge. We also performed a new version of “Magical Glass” with words relating to the village’s glass-making heritage adapted from the original Sunderland.
You can find out more about The Felton Sycamores song here.

July 11th 2016 – Recording Session
We had a recording session this evening with Ally Lee at St. Michael’s. I think we sounded pretty good – we’ll see in a week or so when the editing happens. We managed to get through The Felton Sycamores a few times, also Anerio’s Factum Est Silentium and a quick rendition of Alison’s K6 Telephone Box to finish off the evening – you see this in the picture, but what you’re hearing is a bit of our warm-up on the “Roses” with encouragement and yelling from the conductor and our usual merriment at the end. Home to rum and coke while watching University Challenge on the iPlayer which included a question about Giles Gilbert Scott who actually designed our telephone box himself.

July 2016 – Feltonbury
We sang at this local music festival for the first time – once in Gallery 45 and again on the bridge. We don’t like singing outdoors much, but we learn these things as we go along!
Update 2025 – We’ve sung at every Feltonbury since – still occasionally outside, but mostly indoors!

July 26th 2016 – Review Of The Year
The Bridge Singers has been going a year and to mark the occasion, I made a video of one of our performances (Magical Glass) and combined it with photos of our busy 2015-16 season – right from the off, we’ve done lots of stuff!

Update August 2025: I’ve made one of these “Review Of The Year” videos every year in our summer break. There are ten so far.
Here are the links if you want to binge:
2016-2017
2017-2018
2018-2019
2019-2020
2020-2021
2021-2022
2022-2023
2023-2024
2024-2025

December 18th 2016 – All We Like Sheep
The Bridge Singers’ festive recitals in 2016 centred around sheepy music and included in their programmes in Longframlington and Felton,  Little Bo-Peep (hear their performance here), Alison’s K6 Telephone Box (we inserted sheep into the box to make it relevant!) and The Lamb (partnered with Tavener’s setting of the same) , as well as my arrangements of Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds, Handel’s He Shall Feed his Flock, folk songs “Sheep Crook and Black Dog” and “We Shepherds Are the Best Of Men.” The creative social secretary of the choir, Hazel, adorned Felton Village Hall with appropriate décor too! The Lamb proved popular with the choir and audience and we will reprise it in our summer recitals which will centre around the windows in the village church.

April 10th 2017 – Glass Orchestra
The Bridge Singers had a singing day at Ingram Village Hall, and as part of the afternoon merriment we composed music using a glass orchestra. I applied my usual family and school composing workshop techniques to this group of adults and we came up with five compositions. A whole choir work and four small group pieces. I decided to use some of these sounds in my current composing about the window at St. Michael’s Church. Hear the results of the choir’s creativity here!

I had been asked by one of the choir members to compose my new piece containing the glass orchestra sounds about the window in St. Michael’s Church which needed repairing. Unlike most of the windows in the church it has no images and only a tiny amount of stained glass. I dubbed it the Quiet Window, and composed my piece accordingly. The Bridge Singers performed the piece twice: once as the opener to their Magical Glass concert in that church, and again in the reverberant acoustics of Brinkburn Priory which sits upstream, along the Coquet.
To find out more about the piece, click here. 
To listen to the Brinkburn performance, click here.

July 1st 2017 – Wedding Of The Day
Sylvia and Don. Most of The Bridge Singers hightailed it to Alnwick to stand in the street outside the registry office and give two of our own a surprise flash-mob performance of Can’t Help falling In Love With You.

Update 2025 – We’ve sung at lots of weddings in our first ten years, in a variety of churches and other venues around Northumberland: Felton; Cullercoats; Corbridge; Otterburn; but mostly in Brinkburn Priory. We do so love to sing in there! We usually offer to sing one new (to us) song of the bride and groom’s choosing, their favourite hymns and if any more music is requested we pick suitable songs from our current repertoire, whatever that is. If you’d like us to sing at your wedding, do contact us via our website! Weddings | thebridgesingers

July 12th 2017 – Logo
Our logo of the Felton/Thirston old bridge, which we’ve been using on The Bridge Singers’ posters and programmes since December 2015, has now been approved as the official choir logo, and is to feature on our mail and on a new banner which will accompany us to our gigs. It has been adapted for our concert posters and programme covers to suit our various themes including Oliver Cromwell crossing the bridge last June, a shepherd with a flock of sheep in December and a watermark of the quiet window for the Magical Glass concert. The banner includes streetlights with the villages’ names. The K6 telephone box and a running fox are permanent fixtures no matter what else is passing by!

July 20th 2017 – Look Up…
These four wrote a song for The Bridge Singers’ end-of year party. They are Jenny, Rebekah, Penny and Shuna. The tune of the song “Look Up” is My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean.
The lyrics of “Look Up” are here!
Update 2025: This end-of year party in 2017 was also the occasion for our first “vote for your favourites” poll. Our top 10 back then were: Anerio, Factum Est Silentium; The (Camm) Lamb; Northumberland; Silver Trumpet Gabriel; 59^th Street Bridge Song; If Ye Love Me; Dering, Factum Est Silentium; The Parting Glass; Aya Ngena; Crucifixus……in other words, a complete mixture! And the fascinating thing is that even after all this time and all the other music we’ve sung in between, five of these are still in our top 20 after this year’s vote!

August 23rd 2017 – Phone Box Mania
I wrote “Alison’s K6 Telephone Box” in 2016 in response to a request from Alison to celebrate in song our re-vitalised red phone box in the village, which is now an Info Box. You can read its story here. It’s in a music hall style and has proven very popular with the choir and audiences alike. It’s been performed many times since by the sopranos and altos of The Bridge Singers in gigs throughout 2016 and 2017. The other upshot of it is that members of the choir take photos of telephone boxes wherever they may go and send them back to me!

December 17th 2017 – Fruity Christmas
From the programme to this concert: “As you know we do like a theme, and this year we have moved on from sheep to fruit. It’s remarkable just how many actual proper Christmas songs do contain fruit, but as usual we are presenting a varied range of fruity music from folk songs to music hall numbers to classical favourites to a selection of carols.
The first half of the programme is more serious in nature and includes a glorious two-choir motet by 16^th century Spanish composer Francisco Guerrero, works by choir favourite Handel and three carols by 20^th century English composer Benjamin Britten. Completing the first half are some carols, and also songs by two of our resident composers, Gary and Cheryl.
The second half of the concert is more light-hearted with an array of music hall-style songs, folk songs and more carols. Interspersed amongst the music are readings, also all with a fruit-based theme. There are opportunities for you to sing too, and you’ll find the lyrics you need in this programme.
Do please join us for mince pies, mulled wine and a chat in the interval!”

January 25th 2018, then January 25th 2020 – Burns Nights
2018: Only a month after Christmas, The Bridge Singers put on another concert, full of new repertoire, for Burns Night on 25th January 2018. They were mostly my arrangements of Robert Burns’ songs in the concert as well as a couple of my compositions: No-Umbrella Blues and Loud Blaw The Frosty Breezes. Our special guests were Lionheart Harmony, who sang a series of songs from places where statues of Robert Burns can be found! In order that we might fill up a whole concert in a mere month, there were several quartets, solos and small groups made up of members of the choir. Many of the arrangements are here!
2020: We met the brilliant Jazz pianist, Richard Michael, at a wedding in Brinkburn. He was a relative of the bride, she was 40 minutes late, he played organ improvisations while we waited to sing, we got chatting, he liked The Bridge Singers’ attitude and singing. We asked him to be our guest at our Burns Night Celebration in January 2020. He agreed to come along and was stunningly brilliant. You can hear highlights here: The Bridge Singers’ Burns Night Celebration 2020

June 16th 2018 – Summer Road Show
We went on a tour round Northumberland, stopping off for short concerts in Whittingham Church, St. Paul’s in Alnwick and back home for the full programme in St. Michael’s Felton, and for between-concert food at the Angler’s Arms in Weldon Bridge. It was an exhilarating day, but exhausting, we decided. So no more “three concert in a day” adventures, we resolved! The repertoire from these concerts, though, has been more enduring: Locus Iste by Bruckner; Bogoroditse Devo by Rachmaninov and Abendlied by Rheinberger, all of which we first tackled for these concerts of quite “resonant” music, always appear towards or at the top of our regular lists of favourites, and as a result come out of the library fairly often!

September 22nd 2018 – Happy 150th Birthday!
We always enjoy singing in the very resonant Brinkburn Priory, for weddings and concerts – we’ve done it lots of times. On this particular occasion, they were holding a day-long festival of music to celebrate their Victorian organ’s 150th birthday. There were recitals by organists Marc Bryant, and Kieran Fitzsimons who was joined for two recitals by The Bridge Singers. We sang The Lamb with Kieran accompanying and also the world premiere performances of my new WW1 Commemoration piece, Mustering In Siberia. Possibly the most thrilling part of all this was that we got to have our rehearsal, the previous Monday, in Brinkburn at night in the dark! Here’s a snippet of that rehearsal:

October 14th 2018 – YouTube
The Bridge Singers set up its own Youtube channel to share our songs and recordings. Cheryl also posts lots of videos of us on her Youtube channel – her compositions and arrangements. Have a look for yourself by clicking on these links:
The Bridge Singers Youtube Channel.
Cheryl’s playlist of all our recordings.

November 10th 2018 – WW1 Commemoration Recital
A note from the programme: “Welcome to our Commemoration recital where we are remembering those who served and those who waited at home during WW1, those who came back from the fighting and those who didn’t. Our programme will take you through various aspects of the war from call-up and
volunteering, to the trenches, battles, injuries, death, innocent victims, relatives, prisoners of war, remembrance, looking on the bright side, peace and hope. The 1st half of the recital deals with the more traumatic aspects of the war and we request that you save your applause until the 2nd half when optimism becomes one of the principal emotions. Three of tonight’s pieces have been specially composed for this occasion, and two of these are receiving their world premiere performances. We welcome organist Alan Gidney into our choir family for the first time.

November 10th 2018 – Bob and Alan
This day saw the premiere of a new song “Not the Sort Of Song I Sing In The Shower”, composed in memory of two members of The Bridge Singers who died in 2018. The programme notes for that concert included this: “2018 has been a sad one for The Bridge Singers as two of our founding members, Bob George and Alan Blevins, have died and we would like to honour them in our next song Not The Sort Of Song I Sing In The Shower, composed especially for this occasion. It honours Alan by using his words, “I did remark…that it’s not the sort of song I sing in the shower,” and by the use of a Northumbrian folk tune (Sweet Hesleyside – a mournful tune which is often played at funerals in Northumberland) as an accompaniment. Alan was very proud of being a Northumbrian and always wore Northumbrian tartan for concerts with us.

The song honours Bob by being in a music hall style and has made a comedy out of one imagined incident of the war. Bob was always the first in rehearsals with a quip or one liner and saw the funny side of most things. He also constantly reminded Cheryl that it was the light-hearted songs that he preferred!”

December 15th 2018 – Christmas
There are always suggestions about repertoire from the choir, which I take on board and implement when I can. It was suggested that we sing only Christmas songs in our Christmas concerts after three years of “everything we’ve ever learnt”, “sheep” and “fruit.” I caved in. I don’t want us to be like every other choir that ever existed, but I caved in! Maybe next year, I’ll go back to a mixture again on a related theme which happens to include Christmas!

May 30th 2019 – Ascension Day
This was the first time we were asked to sing at the Ascension Day service in Brinkburn Priory. [Update 2025 – We’ve since gone on to sing on the occasion in 2023, 2024 and 2025]. In 2019 the parish of St. Michael’s Felton and St. Mary’s Longframlington requested a Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and something for communion. The choir performed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei from Missa Luba as well as an abridged version of Monteverdi’s Gloria in 8 parts, arranged by Cheryl to suit the timings requested by the churches, and also Handl’s Ascendit Deus arranged by Cheryl to suit to forces in our choir. Here’s a snippet of the Monteverdi, recorded on an unattended machine with the input levels a little too high, so alas, a bit of crackling:

September-October 2019 – Cumbria Tour
We prepared a concert of Autumn-themed music and took ourselves, for the first time, out of Northumberland and went on tour to Cumbria, performing in St. John’s Keswick, and Lanercost Priory, following a home concert in St. Michael’s, Felton. We started collecting and collating feedback after these concerts too, both positive and negative which inform our progress as a choir. We prefer the positive, of course! “I spoke to my friend tonight who was at Lanercost.  She and her daughter really enjoyed the concert.  They are both musical, her daughter in particular, who said that we sang some very complicated music very well.  She was very impressed and they both said how happy we all sounded and how lovely you were. I think everyone in the choir enjoyed that concert in particular.  The English Heritage lady in the office was particularly moved!”

October 2019 – Lullaby Of Silences
This year I composed what I and many others consider to be one of my best pieces: Lullaby of Silences. I set out to write something emotional, yet quick to learn, and site-specific to the Bridge Singers’ concert at Lanercost Priory in Cumbria. It fitted all those criteria and has been performed successfully four times during the autumn, including a very moving performance next to the statue of Elizabeth Dacre Howard in the Priory ruins. You can read a full write up of the performances and composing process here, and also hear some feedback from the choir in their own voices! Song Stories: Lullaby Of Silences

2019 – Website
Towards the end of 2019, our soprano Shirley has been setting up our very own website. Go have a look! There are lots more pictures, links to recordings, news of upcoming events, and how to contact us! The Bridge Singers | Choir | Felton | Thebridgesingers

December 2019 – Alleluias and Glorias
“Welcome to our recital of Christmassy music for 2019. There’s no particular extra theme this year, just lots of Glorias and Hallelujahs and a few bells thrown in!” Yes – no extra theme, but we did do the entirety of Monteverdi’s Gloria, which was quite the departure for us, singing something so long with multiple movements.
We also made some animated posters to promote our concerts this Christmas. Here’s one of them:

December 16th 2019 – Rachael and Richard’s Wedding
We do like to sing at weddings – almost always people we don’t know, but this one was different. Rachael used to be in the choir and her Mum still is. We sang as a surprise for all the guests and the groom at Otterburn, trying to be silent while they got married in the next door room, then sneaking around to be on these stairs to serenade the guests into the reception! Rachael’s specific request was Cohen’s Hallelujah, which suited our Christmassy theme very well too!

February 19th 2020 – Coquet Concert Band
The choir performed as part of the Coquet Concert Band’s inaugural concert in Swarland. Andy the MD of the band, had asked me to compose something for both groups to sing/play together for the occasion. This was Bullfinch Morning. The song was inspired by my feelings of distress and unease at various news stories. I always do try to look on the bright side of things, so found some hope in the continuing rising of the sun (often very spectacularly), or the sight of a rare bird on your morning walk, particularly the bullfinches. The band and the choir seemed to like the song and I had good feedback from people in the audience. We were going to perform it again in July with piano accompaniment, but of course, this was not possible, alas!

Early March 2020 – Kate
We sang with a few members of Bailiffgate Singers (with whom she also sang) at the memorial service at Newton-On-The-Moor Village Hall for our very own soprano, Kate, who had died earlier in the year – some of her favourites: Bogoroditse Devo; Now Westlin Winds; 59th Street Bridge Song. Now Westlin Winds was her absolute favourite Robert Burns song. When it was first suggested that we have a Burns Night concert in 2018, she specifically requested this song, and volunteered eagerly to be in a small group who sang it that night.

March 2020-August 2021 – Lockdown Choir
Well, yes. It looked as though things were going to stop for a while – how long a while, no-one knew, so we adapted in a big way, and tried to embrace the changes. Here’s the huge story of The Bridge Singers’ lockdown activities.

May 20th 2021 – Jill
I wrote this to the choir, following the news of our alto Jill’s death: “Many of you may not have known Jill very well, as she was a rather quiet and shy member of the altos right from the start of the choir, but I can tell you that when you got her on her own, she was very lively, very funny, and a very accomplished musician. She could sight-read almost anything when I first knew her, and her ability to follow the score (once she’d found the right one and the right page!) was one of the last things to stay with her – she’d been singing and reading music since she was a child. She completely loved being in the choir – it did give her a lot of joy. She told me this on many occasions, so thanks to all of you who found her music for her and helped her stay in the choir as long as we did.”
Update 2025 – When this choir started it never occurred to me that one of the things I would be doing is summing up in an email what a choir member and friend had meant to us all, while imparting news of their death. It’s happened a few times as we’ve remembered Alan, Bob, Kate, Jenny, Jill, Paul, Margaret, Gillian, Carol. For all of these, we’ve been able to honour them at their funeral or a service of thanksgiving, or by including their favourite music in our concerts. With Jill it was different because she died during the lockdowns after being ill and therefore absent for a long time, and she was so quiet that most people did not know her or what music she really preferred.
All ten of these friends were, however, equally valued and valuable members of The Bridge Singers.

31st July 2021 – Singing morning at Thirston House
Word of our exploits during the lockdowns reached lots of corners of the village and once the restrictions on numbers were lifted in July, we were invited to practice in the grounds of Thirston House, where there is a large lawn (huge, indeed) one Saturday morning, to simulate our popular singing days. It of course rained about half way through, so they exceedingly kindly invited us, mud and all, into their conservatory and adjacent rather grand dining room. I cannot tell you how thrilling it was for us to sing indoors together again after so long, even if we did have to spread out to many times our usual surface area.

August 21st 2021 – Outside at Feltonbury
All manner of things were resuming tentatively, including our village music festival, Feltonbury – outdoors only of course!

September 4th 2021 – Concert Outside The Magical Glass
Despite the restrictions on the number of people who could sing together being removed in July, this was only for outdoors singing, and restrictions still remained with mask-wearing and distance between people indoors and out. However, we were able to resume rehearsals in the larger spaces of St. Michael’s Church and the village hall in the autumn, and to start off our new term, we gave a celebratory concert outside the Felton Park Greenhouse (scene of our first end-of-year party in 2016), which features in our song, Magical Glass.

Christmas 2021- Proper concerts again, and singing on our bridge
We presented two shortish Christmas concerts in Felton and Acklington, and also re-enacted our 2020 bridge-singing-by-torchlight, but this time we did not need to spread out over the entirety of the bridge mostly unseen, mostly unheard, and out of reach of everyone else.

We wrote this in the November edition of “The Bridge”: We are revising some of our old Christmas favourites to get us gently back into the swing of things and will be performing these in St. John The Divine Church, Acklington on Monday December 13^th at 7.30pm and on the afternoon of 18th December, 3pm in St. Michael’s Felton. As usual, there will be a mixture of styles in our repertoire, including some folky songs, some very popular carols, a few more obscure items, and also Handl’s Ascendit Deus. We first sang this beautiful and cheerful anthem at Brinkburn Priory for the Ascension Day service in 2019 and then again in the summer. It was one of the favourite songs of our beloved soprano and choir secretary Jenny Ellis, who died earlier this year, so we are singing it in honour and happy recollection of her.

February 28th 2022 – Concert of Silences
From the programme: This is a concert of silences. All the music and readings have actual silence, or the words silent or silence in them. These songs of silence include some of our favourite pieces of music from past concerts, some songs we’ve learnt during the recent online, recordings and outdoors phases of The Bridge Singers, and some new songs written during these last two years. They represent our new home here at St. Michael’s Church, they represent the creativity that many of us have explored and nurtured during these two years of lockdowns and isolation, they represent those of us who are no longer with us, they represent our increased awareness of the sounds around us, and they celebrate the fact that this choir has not been silenced. We’ve found new ways to be a community of people who have at least one thing in common and we have continued to find new ways to make music together.
We live-streamed the concert on YouTube as we were still unable to have a full church, and we ourselves were spread out considerably. Anyway, the entire concert is still available to listen to with difficult recording conditions providing not the best sound, and you can read all about it here!

July 16th and 18th 2022 – Exuberant Songs For A Summer Evening
From the programme for this concert: “Since the planning stages in 2019, this concert has been referred to in The Bridge Singers as the “Queens Concert”, with the original performance date to be in July 2020. Sticking to our stated aim of including a mixture of classical, folk and popular music, the centrepiece was to be Purcell’s Come Ye Sons Of Art, composed for the birthday of Queen Mary II in 1694, and around it would be folk songs from Queensland and Victoria in Australia, and songs by the group Queen. So as not to confuse everyone with Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee (for this concert’s music has no reference to her at all, I’m afraid), we have steered our marketing away from the Queens for this much-delayed concert, even though it still is mostly that same repertoire!
The happy results of all this delay are that we have new songs by Gary and Cheryl which did not exist in July 2020, but do now, and our original plan was to be accompanied in the Purcell on keyboard, but in the intervening years we have made friends with the Westfield Brass Quintet and so they will not only feature in the Purcell, but play their own set as well.
Most of the music in this concert is cheerful or celebratory or light-hearted. We’ve managed to learn some of it in time to sing at our three recent wedding bookings in May, and still more at Feltonbury in June, but some is new for these concerts – we’ve saved them especially for you!“
Read more about our Queens-themed repertoire here!

October 30th 2022
We sang at Brinkburn. Lots of us! To mark the end of their season before closing for the winter, they invited a few musicians in to use the church, so we rolled up, had a practice outside, as you see in the picture, and sang our hearts out, as we do so love to do there! This is our fifth of six outings singing at Brinkburn this year – we’ve already sung at two weddings, two wedding fayres and will be back in December for the annual carol service!

December 2022-January 2023 – Mary and Epiphany
We presented two different short programmes for Christmas this year: one at the beginning of December with all songs dedicated to St. Mary in some way, and one on January 6th for Epiphany. For this second one we invited back our friends in the Westfield Brass Quintet, and you can read more about that here!

For our Mary concert you can see from the programme below that we had a mixture of Christmas music and other Mary-themed songs including three different Ave Marias, a Welsh carol (a pre-emptive strike learning some Welsh before the upcoming St. David’s Day concert in March!), and a Medieval song, Madre Que Festi which also featured a quartet of recorders.

March 1st 2023 – St. David’s Day
Ever since our first Burns’ night concert in 2018, the thought that we would present a concert of Welsh music for St. David’s Day, has been pondered upon… and this was the year the pondering changed to action! We had as our guests Harps Northumbria and went back to St. Lawrence’s Church in Warkworth. Even though it was a weekday, we had a large audience and were complimented on our Welsh by several in the audience, including our friend Gwyn Thomas who had come to a singing day earlier in the year to help us with that very skill. Again, there is a write up of that concert with clips and photos. Click here to find that!

April 22nd 2023 – Singing Day
Jazz singer Jacqui Wicks came to help us with our preparations for the Night and Day concert, which contains quite a few jazzy numbers. She worked on some jazzy approaches to singing, trying to free us up to add elements of improvisation to our delivery. Feedback on the day from Jacqui herself: “thank you so much for inviting me to work with Bridge Singers, I so enjoyed the day, they are absolutely LOVELY people and sing beautifully. I was genuinely touched by the effort they made to try new things…and the gusto with which they approached everything…. You’ve created something rather magical there. They make a MUCH better sound when they aren’t glued to the music, so maybe they could gingerly try singing familiar things without the text.  Also, when they smile it’s more tuneful and bright….”

Update 2025: Jacqui was one of several guests who’ve helped us out at these weekend Singing Days – we generally visit one or other of the splendid village halls around Northumberland, and practice repertoire, work on technique, sometimes try out new things, and always have lots of laughter and a huge and delicious shared lunch. Other guest leaders have included professional singers Sarah Gray, Veronica Gilbert and Margaret Watchorn, top jazz pianist (and our Robert Burns collaborator) Richard Michael, Shape Note leader Phil Tyler and our pal Gwyn Thomas who came to Howick to help us with our Welsh in 2023. At other times Cheryl has led the workshops with some composing activities, some instrumental work and general repertoire, and Jenny Ellis also did some vocal health workshops with us – we like to try new things, as Jacqui says!

July 1st 2023 – Night And Day Concert
We joined forces with our pals from across the A1, Swarland Voices to perform a range of songs that took us from before dawn to well into the night. There was more popular music in this one than usual, after our concentration on folk music for our St. David’s Day recital in March, and our wide range of classical styles and carols at Christmas, but as ever, there was a judicious mixture. There’s a full write up of the concert, plus lots of clips, if you click this link!

December 2023 – Christmas Vote
The whole choir voted for their five favourite Christmas songs that we’ve ever sung during the summer of 2023, and we performed selections from the top 70 minutes of music from that poll in our very many Christmas performances that year: in Alnwick for the mayor, at Brinkburn, at Bamburgh Castle, at our soprano Margaret’s funeral, and at our own concert in Felton. I did not deviate from their results at all apart from including The Boar’s Head Carol which was our lovely tenor Paul’s favourite. He died suddenly earlier in the year, but had very efficiently already put in his votes. No-one else voted for this one, so it was a fitting tribute. There is a complete write-up of that vote elsewhere along with programme notes and clips. Click here to read that one!

2015-2025 – World Premieres
I’m not the only one to have written new songs for The Bridge Singers. We’ve performed 21 world premieres altogether since we started in 2015, by me, by Gary Steward who is also one of our tenors, and by Margaret Watchorn who composed “For St. John’s Day” for us in 2024. She also came to a couple of Singing Days with us in 2024, accompanied us for our 2023 Christmas concert, and we did indeed perform both For St. John’s Day and her Hildegard-Of-Bingen-inspired O Frondens Virga in 2024.
Gary has written two songs specially for us and we have sung four of his beautiful songs altogether. You can hear them all here.

2023-4 – Some Sad Yet Happy Occasions
At the end of 2023, our soprano Margaret died, and her husband Chris asked us to sing at her funeral – for half an hour beforehand and several times during the service. We were in the middle of our Christmas preparations, so we included a lot of that repertoire in our selection, but also quickly revised a couple of Margaret’s favourites: Rutter’s The Lord Bless You And Keep You and Lullaby of Silences. You can hear a little of what we sang here:

Later, in March we sang at the funeral of another of our very recent members, Gillian. Her daughter Jackie, wrote very movingly of her planning for this funeral and our contribution to it: Saying Goodbye to Mum (2) – Stitches by the Sea. In the autumn, when Gillian decided to retire from the choir, a few of us had gone to house to farewell her from the choir with her favourite songs – such a happy afternoon.

In June we sang at an exceedingly well-attended thanksgiving service for alto Carol in Jesmond – possibly our largest ever audience. Again we sang before the service and several times during, including our first ever performance of “Right, Said Fred” – one of Carol’s favourite songs. We did learn this in record time, but it has gone on to become one of our favourites too, and we’ve included it in our concerts for the rest of 2024. Carol’s husband Richard (and one of our basses) read part of Psalm 139 at the service, and later asked me to set it to music for the choir. The result of this request was “Knit Me Together”. To learn more about Knit Me Together click this link.

January-September 2024 – Songs of the North-East
The majority of our repertoire in the first part of 2024 was music from the north-east of England, This is what we sang at Feltonbury, the Rennington Music Festival, Longframlington Flower Festival, Wallington Hall, and our own concerts in Warkworth and Longhirst. You can read more about the music we sang in the programme notes here, and also hear some recordings of our efforts. Songs From The North-East Of England

September 30th 2024 – A Takeaway Sunrise
This was the world premiere of a new song written for us which we eventually performed at the Rennington Festival. You can read all about its story here!

December 2024 – Carols and Wintry Songs
Back to an over-arching theme this Christmas – Winter – a theme that includes Christmas so plenty of actual Christmassy repertoire in amongst it. You can read about and hear more here: Carols And Wintry Songs Lots of this repertoire will carry on into 2025 too.

April-May 2025 – Songs For May Day
We had a long run from our Christmas concert to these two May-themed concerts in Wooler and Felton and have kept some things in the repertoire so we can really focus on the details
You can read about this selection of music here, and hear lots of clips from our two concerts.

July 2025 – Simply Our Favourites
After another church service at Brinkburn, and another performance at Feltonbury, we finished our season with a concert in Warkworth, continuing some of the May Day and Winter repertoire and bringing back some of our favourites of old.
During our celebratory 10th anniversary year, 2025-2026, we will be singing our favourite songs, and others that have meant a lot to us. To this end, we’ve been voting from a repertoire list of 298 songs (and that doesn’t include hymns and regular carols we’ve done as congregational items!). Everyone had ten votes, some put in more, others put in fewer. Habitual favourites were not on the list as they are automatically “in”. Hopefully by the end of July 2026, we will have sung everything on our top 20, but this year we’ve revised ten from the list below already!

Here’s a minute of us from the very end of that concert (the encore indeed), some photos and also photos of a visit some of us made to see our former alto Lesley May.

And so we look towards our celebratory year with recitals coming up in Newcastle Cathedral, Hexham Abbey, another Burns Night, a repeat (with extras) of our first ever concert in Felton Village Hall, a workshop with a very special (as yet, surprise) guest, and hopefully including all of our top 20 songs from the poll, plus the four “in”s:

• Bogoroditse Devo, Rachmaninoff
• Abendlied, Rheinberger
• Lullaby Of Silences, Camm
• O Magnum Mysterium, Lauridsen

1. Days, Ray Davies
2. Misty Morning, Bob Marley
3. One Day Like This, Elbow
4. Skydancer: Ghost Of The Moors, Camm
5. Crossing The Bar, Rani Arbo
6. O Radiant Dawn, James MacMillan
7. Factum Est Silentium – Anerio
8. Locus Iste – Bruckner
9. Northumberland – Steward
10. When I Am Laid In Earth – Purcell
11. Blue Moon – Rogers/Hart
12. Crucifixus – Lotti
13. Lamb, The – Camm
14. Lux Aeterna – Elgar
15. Mustering in Siberia – Camm
16. Teo Torriatte – Queen
17. Way Old Friends Do, The – ABBA
18. If Ye Love Me – Tallis
19. And So It Goes – Billy Joel
20. Ascendit Deus – Jakob Handl

To keep up with our festivities in 2025-2026, check our website and facebook pages! The Bridge Singers | Choir | Felton | Thebridgesingers