The Texas Liberty Christian Chorale, joined forces with De La Salle Senior Choir to provide a very special Coffee Concert at Christ Church Cathedral before a capacity audience. It still bewilders me how or why the Arts Council felt it necessary to axe funding to this venue completely.
I loved the up-front declaration of these young Christian Americans as they introduced individual items and proclaiming and attesting to their faith in simple unambiguous terms.
De La Salle opened with proceedings with the deeper voices of tenor and basses and Bro.Ben Hanlon is so inspirational with these young charges. He encourages and delegates and it was good to see young performer like Eamonn O’Neill take on some conducting duties and to see that actor of his young generation Glenn Murphy, sing in the choir.
I loved the deep resonance of Ben Hanlon’s arrangement of The Lord’s Prayer. A beautiful restful, sea-shanty Lowlands was excellent as were the harmonies in Fite Fuaite.
A traditional quartet delighted visitors with some Irish tunes. The Liberty Christian Chorale, a forty-five strong youth choir impressed with zest, vigour, rigour and respectful harmonies. I loved the exuberance of the girl who stepped up and introduced a piece with – My name is Courtney…Witness, gave testament to the Lord and a Spanish song Amor De Mi Alma was beautiful as was a newer version of Amazing Grace. The Battle of Jericho was as good as the Latin hymn – Daemon Irrepit Callidus.
There was a wow factor in the solos and strong bass line for I’m Gonna Sing Til The Spirit Moves In My Heart and when both choirs joined for a Danny Boy it was marvellous and it had a spiritual quality I was not aware of before.
