Convention in Brisbane

Yes...it's really true!

May 19 - 21, 50 members of Brindabella Chorus plus director Glenda Millgate competed at our regional competition in Brisbane. 15 choruses from all over Australia competed. Brindabella Chorus was thrilled to be awarded first place in the mid-size category (30 - 60 voices) and second overall behind Perth Harmony, who had 85 singers on stage!

Thanks so much for all the positive messages and good wishes. As you can imagine, Brindabella Chorus is just a little excited at our result. Most of the chorus went home on the same flight on the Sunday night after convention. They were thrilled to be met by a large contingent of family and friends including a banner and cheering!

I don't think we could ever explain how exciting it was to hear our name called on Saturday night for 1st place midsize and 2nd place overall. The 1st place midsize was particularly a surprise...we genuinely had no idea that we had done so well. We had prepared ourselves for the outside eventuality of a 4th or 5th place medal overall and genuinely didn't expect anything more. After they announced 3rd and 2nd midsize, most of us were trying to work out who was left!

When they announced 5th place overall, many chorus members did the math pretty quickly and knew we had placed 2nd! We had a bit of trouble containing ourselves waiting for the scores. We were surprised and thrilled to find that we'd gone up by 75 points. We've worked really steadily all this year, and we really hadn't registered how much we had improved over that time. There wasn't really a single 'ah hah' moment where the chorus suddenly got magically better, it was a steady progression.

Of course, this also meant that we got to sing in the showcase. Thank heavens we had thought about it! We sang our contest uptune 'The Moment I Saw Your Eyes' and then a rousing version of 'We Are Family'.

All up, I think that this was possibly one of the best weekends of our chorus history. All credit to every member of the chorus who took up the challenge to take personal responsibility for their own improvement and rose even higher than my expectations.

We had a ball at the afterglow. Very early on, a very large group sang 'Sound Celebration' in the open area near the bar, and it was absolutely incredible...the sheer volume, quality and purity of the music was one of those amazing moments that you only catch every few years, and it was truly mind blowing to be standing at the epicentre of all those singers, holding the final chord in my hands.

Mmmmm, it's very nice hanging about up here in the clouds. Hope I don't come down to soon.

Cheers, Glenda (Musical director)