River’s Pride – This is the Greatest Show!!!

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for… Woah!!! Oh, hang on a minute that’s not right… wrong show!

After months of planning, worry, blood, sweat and tears,Sing United’s show day finally arrived on Friday 6th July! So this was it! No turning back now, the Discovery Museum was waiting for us! And what a build up we’d had! A wonderful first term of the newly formed Sing United. We’d seen the culmination of a heartfelt vision and 120 joyful voices coming together to create something really different… really unique… something really special.

Above all, Sing United is about community. A group of people who together form a magnificent, warm, electric atmosphere like no other. The commitment of the singers and our leading man, Mark Deeks, is unquestionable. Combined with a collective kindness of spirit, this results in a forum where we can pretty much achieve anything we put our minds to!

Sing United Supports: The RNLI

Giving back is at the heart of what we do. As a result rehearsals have become a warm hive of community activity! This term our focus for support was the RNLI, Blyth Lifeboat, to fit with our River’s Pride show theme. Our generous group gave their time and money to find as many ways as humanly possible to raise some well needed cash for them. Knitting, sewing, crafting, raffling along with flogging anything a certain shade of green became the norm! The sense of community giving also spilled over into many different acts of kindness towards one another. Sing United was certainly evolving in to something special and a real sense of good old community spirit prevailed.

The meaning behind the music…

Our connection with the music and songs we were singing was brought to life by our Meet the Singers series of ‘Our River Stories‘. This is where our very own clan were given the opportunity to share their family connections to the theme of our River’s Pride show and beloved North East. We thought maybe a few people may have a story or two to share of family connections to the shipyards. But we weren’t quite prepared for the amazing volume of stories that came in!  Old photographs and papers looked back into family history and went right up to the present day. An emotional insight into our singers’ lives really added a little extra something to how close we are as a unit and how special those songs have become to us.

We could all feel something really quite special brewing as the weeks and songs rolled by, a large part of the music being new to many. The challenge had been set for us, but could we deliver? Mid term, saw a very welcome and exciting interlude with the advent of Gareth Malone’s concert at our very own Sage Gateshead with the super talented Swingles! A lucky portion of Sing United flew the green, black and white flag for us all. They nailed a superb performance backing Gareth and The Swingles in the second half of their incredible show. What an honour for Sing United, bringing forward their first public performance by over a month and with a celeb, no less!

On with the show!

No time to let our 5 minutes of fame go to our heads, we had a show to learn! We all knew this one was taking some serious time to nail but my would it be worth it! The band call came round alarmingly quickly with less than two weeks to go to the big day. It was a treat to hear the amazing 5 piece band for the first time and we all knew the little bits we individually needed to work on. This was quickly followed by an emotional and very fitting taster of our show in the sunshine at Tynemouth Priory. Singing ‘Big River’ at the mouth of the Tyne, in the glorious sunshine as sailing boats drifted on by in the distance, has to be special in the memory banks for many of us.

The final piece in the jigsaw setting us all up for the big day. It was almost in sight!

River’s Pride Show Day

The day was an absolute scorcher, in more ways than one! So, Mark headed to the Discovery Museum in the blazing sunshine to meet with our fabulous Production Assistant for the day, Laura. Our lovely media student was tasked with capturing photos, videos and soundbites of our audience and singers’ reactions to the show. The sound guys were on their way too as over a hundred singers from around the region dashed away from work to descend on our venue which would become home for the rest of the day. One by one the band arrived to set up for the sound check with the singers at 5pm, everyone making their way to the top floor of our beautiful venue. Backstage the excitement was certainly building as singers were starting to fill the ‘green room’. With a little dash of black and white too.

Testing, testing…

With the sound check underway, this was probably the first opportunity for us all to really take in the spectacular Great Hall for the first time. What an incredible venue! Next was the unenviable task of placing us all on the stage, taken on and executed brilliantly by Mark and Angela, well… Angela really!?! All now happy with our positions and ready to see our show finally taking shape. We were so lucky to be joined by Gavin Forster, from Media Borne. He dashed about in the shadows from the moment we all arrived to record the day’s events forever.

Wow, the acoustics were amazing! The snippets from the show that we got to sample with the band sounded brilliant and we knew the audience were in for a treat! The excitement was building to another level if that was possible! It was hard not to get lost in the wonderful sounds of our talented band. From the funky solo guitar intros of Matt Spence to the soaring strings courtesy of Vince Fleming. Luckily we had Simon Ferry keeping us all moving with his driving drum beat and super cool vibes from Pete Morris on the double bass. All held together by our maestro on the keys, conducting us all with the ever trusty nod of his head!

Sing United supporting the community

Sound check was over in a flash! Now it was time for a quick bite to eat, breath of fresh air and a cheeky little drink (for medicinal purposes only!) and head for showtime! The wonderful children of Stocksfield Primary School treated our audience as they arrived to their very own river songs. Encouraging involvement of children in community singing in our region is an integral part of Sing United’s mission and we were so thrilled they joined us. A queue formed as tickets were checked and the seats of our sell out audience started to fill. There was a tangible buzz and excitement created by our expectant audience. Friends and family gathered, the bar was busy and the atmosphere building to the curtain going up! Almost there…

River’s Pride Show: The Finale

And so to the show! Finally, we were off! The numbers flew past, the warmth of the audience grew with every song along with the pride and joy of all the singers. We welcomed the wonderful Cliff Lee who had the task of signing our river songs for the audience. It’s so hard not to be mesmerised by his interpretations of the songs. He was certainly another special addition to our show.

Highlights? It’s so hard to choose as there were so many! Was it the gentle lilt of ‘Bring Me A Boat’ or maybe the driving beat of ‘Black Trade’? Though, if you’d have told us at the beginning of rehearsals that we’d all be getting our funky groove on to ‘When the Levee Breaks’ not many would have believed it! All too soon we were at the climax of the show with our emotional encore of ‘Big River’. The applause was deafening, the audience on their feet and the singers were so elated to be there. In the moment. Sharing something truly special.

So, our River’s Pride show was a hit all round! Stay tuned for what’s coming next…