Have been active on the music front with our choir giving three performances over the last couple of weeks. It has been fun going out in to the community singing to people with similar disabilities to our own. The first was to a group for professionals who have had strokes. When we were thanked the organizer of the group said he had been moved to see the big improvement in people in our choir group who had had strokes and whose language had been affected. Now after some months in the choir they not only talk better but sing beautifully too.
The next was to a group of stroke people with aphasia (loss of language). They enjoyed our carol singing and we enjoyed singing to and with them, as they joined in with familiar tunes and some carols.
Have been spurred on by the Young@Heart Chorus whom I went to hear with other members of our choir this week at the Civic . They are a group of older people in their 70s and 80s from North Hampton, Massachussetts, who sing pop and rock music mainly from the 1970s and 80s. They were excellent and had 5 New Zealand people to swell their numbers. They sang a medley of NZ songs too which were among the tunes I recognized - 10 guitars, Poi e, How Bizarre, and something from Flight of the Conchords repertoire.
Then on Saturday we had our own concert in a lovely old church, St Lukes on Remuera Rd, singing all lthe songs we sang during the year and some carols. There were about 60 or 70 people there - friends and relatives, and parishioners of the church. All this has been a new experience for me and quite exciting.
