Robert Plant hit me with his microphone

Actually that didn’t happen, but it could have! We performed at Cancer Research’s Sound and Vision Event with Robert Plant and Beth Nielsen Chapman on Thursday, and up until Wednesday night I was just concentrating on the music and not especially bothered about the celebrity element. But on Wednesday, as we stood all ranked up on the stage at the iconic Abbey Road Studios for our rehearsal and sound check, with Robert Plant swinging his mic in front of us, I confess I got a bit starstruck. Robert Plant was right THERE! I could reach out and pull his hair! Cool eh?

So Sound and Vision was going to have to be pretty amazing to make up for all the effort, extra rehearsals, memorizing the music, gurning in front of the mirror in an attempt to look good singing, cramming ourselves up together and getting the tape measure out to see how many choir members we could squeeze into our allotted space. And did it live up to expectations? Absolutely! We walked onto a hot, dark stage in front of 400 gig-goers whom we fully expected not to be much interested in the choir. But in fact the atmosphere was electric.

Our two songs with Beth – The Colour of Roses and How We Love (for which Beth played John Lennon’s piano) were faultless and beautifully atmospheric. We also did two Oriana classic pieces just by ourselves. Calabash Trees is probably our most visual performance piece with clapping and clicking interspersed through the singing, so it seemed appropriate for the event. Our other classic – Sleep by Eric Whitacre – had dragged a bit in the Wednesday rehearsal because it needs so much energy and commitment to make it work, and some of the choir didn’t know it that well. But we made a last-minute decision to use the sheet music, and on the night it was magical. Then the high point - Robert arrived on stage to sing two very different pieces with us. Scott Walker’s Farmer in the City was spine-tingling, with Robert intoning soulfully over the slow harmonies of the choir building to a stunning climax. I Bid You Goodnight was a jollier piece with inflections of country, blues, gospel and rock. Robert did some superb improvisation while we popped in with the occasional “good night!” The grand finale was a rendition of My Sweet Lord, on George Harrison’s birthday, for which we were joined on stage by Beth, David Gray and Newton Faulkner. This was our potentially most disastrous number, as we’d had no rehearsal with two of the soloists. And indeed there were a couple of “gulp, just keep smiling!” moments, but it was great fun and by the end the audience was roaring along. This song, along with the others we sang with Robert and Beth, were all in choral arrangements by our conductor David Drummond, and once again he did us proud by providing such exciting arrangements and steering us through the partnership between soloists, musicians and choir. The whole evening was superb, and I think reconfirmed all of us in our commitment to this amazing choir! And as a bonus, we all got a signed CD from Robert. Who could want more?