Day 13: Concert at Ely Cathedral

January 25, 2018

24 January 2018

We all woke up at six in the morning after a late night at Selwyn College, and we were on our way to St. John’s College to see one of the best choirs in England rehearse—or so we thought. Unfortunately, traffic made us late for our visit and we had to scrap the visit entirely.

On a lighter note, our first actual stop of the day was Ely Cathedral. We looked around for a little and then we headed out to explore the city of Ely. A few of us decided to eat at a small diner in which we had a good second breakfast! After walking around Ely and getting caught in a rainstorm on the way back, we fried off and prepared for our concert.

For this concert, we sang in Ely Cathedral’s Lady Chapel, which was a large room with amazing acoustics. Because of the acoustics, we had to take our time, sing slowly, and enjoy the massive echo that occurred after each note. We sang our entire repertoire minus “Make A Joyful Noise” due to the lack of a large organ. We did have a small organ, but it would not have made too much of a joyful noise.

The dress of the choir was the same as all of our other performances; we wore a black robe and a white robe over it. The audience members were all older men and women minus the few RMC students that were not part of the choir. They definitely enjoyed themselves throughout the concert because after the concert, most of them chatted away with us and asked us about our trip and our life back home.

It was simply a joy to be able to sing in such a building; it was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity. Once again I particularly enjoyed singing some of the more exposed songs such as “The 23rd Psalm” and “Light”. Those two songs in particular gave me chills as they echoed through the chapel. It was a fun time and I’m sad that we won’t be performing our repertoire anymore as this was our last concert and our last performance is tomorrow at an Evensong service.

After our concert, the long bus ride to London provided an opportunity to take some pictures. Sadly, my pictures weren’t the best as it was raining a lot and my side of the bus did not have as good of a view. When we arrived in London, we checked into our hotel and had dinner at a nearby restaurant. We ate fish and chips!