MEMBERS of the South Berkshire Singers dedicated proceeds of their Summer Concert to the ‘spaceforall’ project at All Saints Church in Wokingham.
The concert took place in July at the church in front of a large audience of some 300 people. In all, £2,071 was raised for its Space for All project, which has seen a rebuild of the church’s sanctuary to turn it into a multi-use space for the whole community.
It was a very enjoyable evening in which members of the choir, under the inspirational direction of Karen Phillips and the talented accompanist Simon Dinsdale were all proud to play our part.
Since Easter, when we performed Handel’s Messiah, we have been practising a completely different programme of music for our Summer Concert All Aboard in which we were joined by the children’s choir of St Teresa’s Catholic Academy, Wokingham, under the direction of Krystle Hewitson.
The children sang four songs and joined us in the performance of Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo.
The choir worked very hard to learn Captain Noah, Feel the Spirit, The Turtle Dove and The Seal Lullaby and for the performance we were joined by five professional musicians: David Walder (tenor), Alex Kershaw (drums), Lionel Browne (bass guitar), Krystle Hewitson (flute) and Catherine Bickley, (clarinet).
Last month, All Saints’ treasurer Anne King and church warden John Burburyvisited the choir in All Saints School to receive the cheque.
She explained spaceforall is providing a much-needed facility in this community and guarantees the church building’s value and importance to the future life of the town.
This new spacious and flexible community space will help meet some of the pressing challenges residents of our community in this area of Wokingham will be facing in the next few years, providing a new local public meeting space open to all every day.
She added: “All Saints was really delighted that the spaceforal’ programme was chosen as the South Berkshire Singers charity of the year.
“We were overwhelmed by the success of the concert and extremely grateful for the money which will help to support and develop spaceforall in the future.”
The South Berkshire Singers meets on Tuesdays from 7.40pm at All Saints School in Norreys Avenue, Wokingham. New members are welcome.
For more details, log on to: www.southberkshiresingers.org.uk or www.facebook.com/SouthBerkshireSingers/
Dave Donaldson
