Black Sheep at Keynsham Music Festival

For over two decades, Keynsham music festival has been celebrating musical talent and community, showcasing local, national and even international acts and is run by local volunteers, partners and community organisations.

Black Sheep Harmony has contributed to this inclusive and eclectic festival in the past so we were honoured to be invited back this year to sing as guests in a concert hosted by the Keynsham Good Afternoon Choir.

Good Afternoon Choirs were started fifteen years ago by Grenville Jones and now, this has grown to thirty-four non-audition Good Afternoon Choirs across the South West, South Wales and even London where anyone can sing just for fun - in the afternoons!

The concert was held in Keynsham’s lovely parish church, St John’s, on Friday 4th July.

The large audience was welcomed by B&NES councillor and Chair of Keynsham Town Council, Andy Wait. The Keynsham Good Afternoon Choir then entertained us all with their beautiful first set, conducted by John Hare and accompanied by Alison Howell.

 

Black Sheep Harmony then took to the stage singing ‘Bring Me Little Water Sylvy’, a song by blues legend, Lead Belly with stunning body percussion devised by Moria Smiley; ‘Stitches’ (a hit by Shawn Mendes) and ‘I Know an Old Woman’, a choral arrangement of that well known traditional nursery rhyme about the inadvisability of eating insects! Long standing in-house quartet, The SongSmiths, closed the Black Sheep's first set. 

 

We were then treated to refreshments before the Keynsham Good Afternoon Choir opened the second half with a stirring Les Miserables medley followed by sea shanties.

Black Sheep’s second in-house quartet, Fine Apples, opened our second set where we sang ‘Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody’, Eric Whitacre’s ‘Sleep’ and finished the evening’s entertainment running from the trolls with Edvard Grieg’s exciting ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’. 

 

We would be singing all of the songs (with the exception of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’) a week later in the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in the Open Choir and Female Voice classes.

It was a pleasure to sing in the lovely St John’s Parish Church, thank you to the Keynsham Good Afternoon Choir for inviting us, we hope it’s a friendship that will continue for years to come.

Sue Davis