Monday 21 May 2007

Day 25: Double Edition Today: Performance Feedback

Our choir performance went very well - here is feedback I just found that the local member of parliament posted on her blog:

Lynne's Parliament and Haringey diary Lynne Featherstone is Member of Parliament for Hornsey and Wood Green welcome Comments about Lynne:
I have great admiration for what Lynne Featherstone and the LibDems are doing in Haringey. GS, Muswell Hill
Add to your siteSunday, May 13 Hearing the Highgate Choral Society
On Saturday evening it was off to a concert by the Highgate Choral Society at St Joseph's Church (Highgate Hill). Apart from some Christmas choral concerts at St John's in Smith Square, choral music hasn't been my musical place - despite having such wonderful local groups as this one and the Crouch End Festival Chorus.
But - I was invited to become a patron of the Highgate Choral Society, so it was off to attend the concert to see and support them. And it was absolutely wonderful. The first piece was Haydn's Nelson Mass - which was soaring and uplifting. The second piece (which everyone warned me was 'challenging' and not at all 'traditional') I really liked. It was 'modern' by choral standards - and the composer, Paul Patterson (who is a Highgate resident) was actually there. In eight parts, it veered from discordant to melodic and dramatic.
The choir itself must have numbered eighty or so people – plus there was the New London Orchestra, four soloists and Ronald Corp conducting. All in all, a great local evening and the church was absolutely packed out with hundreds of people.

Day 25: Paulo Coelho's message

I decided last night to open a book called The Manual of the Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho, with my eyes closed whilst thinking of people reading this blog, in order to find a relevant passage. This is the result:

Warriors of light never accept what is unacceptable.

‘“Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too,” says Marek Halter, “because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others.”

Perhaps he is right: there are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power.

But perhaps he isn’t right at all, for there are also warriors of light.

And warriors of light never accept what is unacceptable.’