The 12 Blogs of New Year 2020: Day 3 - THREE CHEERS FOR THE PAST 10 Years!

Day 3 already and my goodness, 'Tempus' certainly does 'Fugit'...!

Not just because today is the third blog of our 12 Blogs of New Year series, nor that the preceding 12 Days of Christmas seem to have gone by in a flash, nor even before we knew it, it's the start of our 10th Anniversary Year already...   ...but whatever has happened to those 10 Years???!!!  More to the point, how did they all start?  And who should we be thanking?

So, the 3rd of The 12 Blogs of New Year 2020 is really our Gratitude to our Founders, so sing up everyone!!!   Hint:  the notes for '...To All Men an Invite...' are quick - we've had complaints :(  ...:

"In the 3rd Blog of New Year, 'The Phoenix' gave to me: Three Hearty Cheers, To All Men an Invite and A Calendar with Dates we can see!"

In February 2010, ten years ago, lead founding member Chris Williams, newly appointed Musical Director Sarah Sheldrake (yes, today our very own Sarah Grimes!), some of Chris's colleagues from the Norfolk Millennium Male Voice Choir (which gave its last performance in 2009) and anyone with an interest in singing who responded to the letters and articles in the local press about an open meeting to discuss the formation of a new male voice choir in Norwich, tyre-levered themselves into the room which would become our rehearsal base, to have those discussions.   (I'm trying to recreate the fact that it was a breathless time with so much going on...)  The result was us, and less than five months later, we were producing our inaugural concert.  From that first open meeting 'full house', we have been striving for full houses ever since and on a number of occasions, most memorably Mile Cross in December 2018, achieve them!  But if it wasn't for the energy in 2009 and 2010 of Chris and his singing buddies, their linking up with Sarah, and for them all getting the whole project off the ground, many parts of Norfolk would not be in easy reach of regular male choral singing to either listen to, or to take part in.  For those opportunities, to Chris, Sarah, and everyone else central to the inception of the Phoenix Male Voice Choir project, Three Hearty Cheers and a heartfelt 'thank you'!