Come & Sing Belshazzar's Feast, 10th-11th January 2026
| Type of post: | Choir news item |
| Sub-type: | No sub-type |
| Posted By: | Hannah Curry |
| Status: | Current |
| Date Posted: | Mon, 12 Jan 2026 |
We took a flying leap in to 2026 with a 2-day Come & Sing event!
Around 50 choir members and over 30 guests joined forces with The Wordsworth Singers and Newmilns and Galston Brass Band for a Come & Sing of William Walton’s thrilling (and challenging!) Belshazzar’s Feast.
After ‘Welcome’ cakes and a vocal warm-up at Castlehill Parish Church, Andy McTaggart & Jenna Martin, with pianistic support from Duncan Williams and Andrew Forbes, rehearsed the choir in sections on Saturday morning, allowing us to get most of the right notes in the right places. The excellent Ayr Choral Home Bakers (rated 5* by one of our guests) kept us fuelled throughout the day and after lunch the whole choir came together for the afternoon’s rehearsal with Andy. We put in another hour and a half of hard work and by the end of the day we were starting to sound respectable!
On Sunday afternoon we reconvened, this time in Ayr’s beautiful town hall where we were joined by Newmilns and Galston Brass Band and both Duncan Williams and John Zhang on keyboards to try and put the whole piece together. The icing on the cake arrived in the form of our tremendous soloist, Phill Gault, who was a very last-minute stand-in – we’re so glad he was able to make it.
At 6pm in front of a much larger than expected and highly enthusiastic audience of friends and family we performed to the best of our ability and with a huge amount of enjoyment. With 2 keyboards, 2 brass bands, over 100 singers and the Wordsworth Singers performing the semi-chorus, the sound was terrific and if not all of the right notes were in quite all of the right places, the smiles on all the faces when we made it to the end really were in the right places. This was an absolute blast. We all learned a lot - both from Andy and Jenna and each other, made new friends, ate a lot of cake and went home feeling we’d experienced something truly….remarkable.
We were absolutely delighted to be joined by so many guest singers for the weekend, not to mention Duncan Williams, Andrew Forbes, John Zhang, The Wordsworth Singers, Newmilns & Galston Brass Band and Phill Gault. Huge thanks to everyone who got involved and to all of the choir members who volunteered to help out to make the weekend go with a swing – it certainly couldn’t have been done without you.
Around 50 choir members and over 30 guests joined forces with The Wordsworth Singers and Newmilns and Galston Brass Band for a Come & Sing of William Walton’s thrilling (and challenging!) Belshazzar’s Feast.
After ‘Welcome’ cakes and a vocal warm-up at Castlehill Parish Church, Andy McTaggart & Jenna Martin, with pianistic support from Duncan Williams and Andrew Forbes, rehearsed the choir in sections on Saturday morning, allowing us to get most of the right notes in the right places. The excellent Ayr Choral Home Bakers (rated 5* by one of our guests) kept us fuelled throughout the day and after lunch the whole choir came together for the afternoon’s rehearsal with Andy. We put in another hour and a half of hard work and by the end of the day we were starting to sound respectable!
On Sunday afternoon we reconvened, this time in Ayr’s beautiful town hall where we were joined by Newmilns and Galston Brass Band and both Duncan Williams and John Zhang on keyboards to try and put the whole piece together. The icing on the cake arrived in the form of our tremendous soloist, Phill Gault, who was a very last-minute stand-in – we’re so glad he was able to make it.
At 6pm in front of a much larger than expected and highly enthusiastic audience of friends and family we performed to the best of our ability and with a huge amount of enjoyment. With 2 keyboards, 2 brass bands, over 100 singers and the Wordsworth Singers performing the semi-chorus, the sound was terrific and if not all of the right notes were in quite all of the right places, the smiles on all the faces when we made it to the end really were in the right places. This was an absolute blast. We all learned a lot - both from Andy and Jenna and each other, made new friends, ate a lot of cake and went home feeling we’d experienced something truly….remarkable.
We were absolutely delighted to be joined by so many guest singers for the weekend, not to mention Duncan Williams, Andrew Forbes, John Zhang, The Wordsworth Singers, Newmilns & Galston Brass Band and Phill Gault. Huge thanks to everyone who got involved and to all of the choir members who volunteered to help out to make the weekend go with a swing – it certainly couldn’t have been done without you.
