Singing at the Newcastle City Hall was a fantastic experience and a big difference from the Whitley Bay Playhouse with an audience of 2000 as apposed to 750. When I first joined Sing Live ("Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things, in exciting places") it was the chance to sing at the City Hall that tempted me only to be told during the first rehearsal that we had been invited to sing at the Royal Albert Hall with an audience of 5000!  | | A star studded night |
This year the Night of 1000 Voices at the Royal Albert Hall celebrated songs from the multi-award winning shows of Trevor Nunn, including Les Miserables, Cats, My Fair Lady, Porgy and Bess, Starlight Express, Anything Goes, Sunset Boulevard, South Pacific - and many more. Once again devised and directed by Hugh Wooldridge and conducted by David Firman it was accompanied by the City of London Philharmonic with celebrity hosts Glenn Close and Roger Moore. We arrived at the Shaftsbury Avenue Theatre in London on Saturday Afternoon for our last rehearsal before travelling to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday. There was a great air of excitement throughout the theatre which became more intense as we were introduced to the soloists one by one. People we had only read about or watched perform, but tomorrow we would be on stage performing with them. Then we were introduced to Roger Moore - well by this time we were a little shaken but not stirred. We rehearsed until 6 o’clock then it was off to the hotel to relax for the evening.  | | The Sing Live men line up for a photo |
We left the hotel on Sunday at 8.30am and arrived at the Royal Albert Hall at around 9.00am. It looked absolutely fantastic and we could not wait to get inside and get on that famous stage. The rehearsal with the orchestra started at around 10.30. All the months of rehearsals were beginning to make sense as the orchestra played and the soloists sang there individual parts. The vastness of the place as we sat on the stage cannot be put into words in was an extraordinary experience. We had two shows on the Sunday, a matinee and an evening performance. There was no time for any site seeing, we only had 20 minutes between the rehearsal and the matinee and 30 minutes between the matinee and the evening performance. | Sing Live concert featured: | Philip Quast - Stars from Les Miserables Tommy Korberg – Anthem from Chess
Judy Kuhn - Someone Else’s Story Lauren Kennedy - I’m Jist a Girl Who Cain’t Say No from Oklahoma Kelli James - Memory Alan Campbell - Sunset Boulevard Sally Ann Triplett and her Angels - Blow Gabriel Blow from Anything Goes Alex Jennings - I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face Kenneth Nichols and Laurie Williamson - Porgy & Bess Leigh Constantine, Tiffany Graves, Alexis Owen Hobbs, Alexandra Jay, Annette McLaughlin and Rebecca Thornhill - Macavity
David Michael Johnson – Starlight Express
Terri Bibb – Phantom of the Opera – Broadway |
The highlight for me was the song Do You Hear The People Sing from Les Miserables. The soloist for this was a guy named Phill Cole who was once an ordinary sing live member who after a total career change is now a professional and currently performing in a production of Beauty and the Beast in Edinburgh. Phil has a great many friends within Sing Live and we all wanted to raise the roof for him when we joined him in the number. It was electric! At the end of the number when the fire works went off and streamers were shot all over the stage, and the first few rows of the audience, we new we had done him proud. It was a phenomenal weekend, a big thank you to John, Gary and Linda (Sing Live) for organising such an event and for enabling an "ordinary" guy like me to take part in an "extraordinary" concert in such an "exciting place". | 
