The Concert
Well, I know it's a couple of weeks after the event, but I thought I'd write something about The Proclaimers' 40th anniversary concert.
For those who don't know, The Proclaimers is a gospel choir based at Rosanna Baptist Church. As you may have already guessed from the previous paragraph, 2006 is our 40th year. I've been in the group since 2000, and I am the current Technical Director.
On September 2, we held a reunion concert at the Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar Performing Arts Centre. The evening was divided up into eras, and each segment featured songs introduced in those years. The current group did a bracket of 7 songs, and then past members from each of the eras were invited to come down to the stage and join in for the songs they know.
My role was to organise the tech gear, design (& run) the lighting, set up (& run) the sound system, and obviously pack up at the end. I certainly didn't do it alone though. I had lots of assistance from (in alphabetical order): Amy, Andrew, Blaine, Bruce, Emily, Ian, Jessica, John R, John W (my dad. Also, thanks go to him for the photos below), Matt and Tim. I hope I haven't left anyone out. Apologies if I have.
The is the current group, with our Musical Director, Tim, out front.
This is the group from the first era of the choir (1966 - 1971). The soloist is Lindsay Summers, brother of the famous opera singer, Jonathan Summers. Jonathan was one of the original members of the group, but unfortunately was not able to be at the reunion concert.
The next era. We decided to associate a colour with each era (worked out from the colour of the uniforms at the time).
The colour for this era was supposed to be brown, so that orangey colour is the best brown I could make with just red, green and blue lights. It turned out ok I reckon!
The 'purple' era...hehe. This is actually different from the first photo - that is pink. Doesn't look much different in the photos though.
This is from the group of 'Classic' songs that span the whole history of the choir. Hence the colour here is white, representing a mix of all the eras.
There was also a 'green' era, but unfortunately I don't have any photos of that.
Here's the tech part. We had two mixers (one for live sound and one for the recording mix). That's me operating the live sound mixer on the left, and also (out of shot) the lighting console. On the recording mixer, we have a nice shot of Ian and his headphones.
The aftermath. Or part thereof. This is part of our tech gear. There was more spread across about 3 or 4 station wagons.
Here we have half of Blaine, Bruce and Ian. Bruce was able to borrow a truck from work to help transport the gear. Much appreciated!
All up, I had a 16 hour day from leaving home to coming back at night. Long day, but fun. The concert went really well, and everything came together nicely.
Apologies for the formatting of this post. When you're creating a post, what you see is NOT what you get...
For those who don't know, The Proclaimers is a gospel choir based at Rosanna Baptist Church. As you may have already guessed from the previous paragraph, 2006 is our 40th year. I've been in the group since 2000, and I am the current Technical Director.
On September 2, we held a reunion concert at the Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar Performing Arts Centre. The evening was divided up into eras, and each segment featured songs introduced in those years. The current group did a bracket of 7 songs, and then past members from each of the eras were invited to come down to the stage and join in for the songs they know.
My role was to organise the tech gear, design (& run) the lighting, set up (& run) the sound system, and obviously pack up at the end. I certainly didn't do it alone though. I had lots of assistance from (in alphabetical order): Amy, Andrew, Blaine, Bruce, Emily, Ian, Jessica, John R, John W (my dad. Also, thanks go to him for the photos below), Matt and Tim. I hope I haven't left anyone out. Apologies if I have.
The is the current group, with our Musical Director, Tim, out front.
This is the group from the first era of the choir (1966 - 1971). The soloist is Lindsay Summers, brother of the famous opera singer, Jonathan Summers. Jonathan was one of the original members of the group, but unfortunately was not able to be at the reunion concert.
The next era. We decided to associate a colour with each era (worked out from the colour of the uniforms at the time).
The colour for this era was supposed to be brown, so that orangey colour is the best brown I could make with just red, green and blue lights. It turned out ok I reckon!
The 'purple' era...hehe. This is actually different from the first photo - that is pink. Doesn't look much different in the photos though.
This is from the group of 'Classic' songs that span the whole history of the choir. Hence the colour here is white, representing a mix of all the eras.There was also a 'green' era, but unfortunately I don't have any photos of that.
Here's the tech part. We had two mixers (one for live sound and one for the recording mix). That's me operating the live sound mixer on the left, and also (out of shot) the lighting console. On the recording mixer, we have a nice shot of Ian and his headphones.
The aftermath. Or part thereof. This is part of our tech gear. There was more spread across about 3 or 4 station wagons.Here we have half of Blaine, Bruce and Ian. Bruce was able to borrow a truck from work to help transport the gear. Much appreciated!
All up, I had a 16 hour day from leaving home to coming back at night. Long day, but fun. The concert went really well, and everything came together nicely.
Apologies for the formatting of this post. When you're creating a post, what you see is NOT what you get...
posted by Rob at 9/16/2006 09:23:00 pm
8 Comments:
Glad to hear it was such a good night. Some great photos. Sounds like you all had lots of fun! :)
Yes, I went to see the Proclaimers once. I remember they did one of my favourite songs, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," by the Hollies. Is that still in their repertoire?
yeah, it is. we may have even done it at the concert. i can't remember though (we did about 37 songs that night, so I don't remember the full set list!)
Hi Rob,
You don't know me and I don't know you either.. haha but I was at the Greensborough Uniting Church last night for the choir concert thing and heard the Proclaimers sing. Your blog was the only related site so I thought maybe you could tell me a bit more about the choir coz I'm interested in joining..
Thanks!
Christina
Hi Christina,
You mean this came up in a search engine or something? Wow...hehe
I'm at work at the moment, so I'll reply with more info when I get home. :)
Hello again,
If you'd like to come along to a practice you'd be most welcome! We're always keen to get new members! We practice at 7:30pm at Rosanna Baptist Church virtually every Monday night. Having said that, we're not practicing next week (cup weekend).
There's about 20-25 in the group usually, so the contingent on Saturday night was pretty light-on.
If you'd like more info, feel free to contact me at rwilk0(at)netscape.net. (Obviously replace the (at) with @ - just trying to stop spammers...)
Btw, that's a zero in the email address, not an 'O'.
Just out of interest, how exactly did you find this site? I wouldn't have thought it had a very high profile!
I was reading Jonathan Summers biography and the Proclaimers aren't mentioned, surely a more exciting background than some Operas!
I remember the 70s concerts, at least one of which I attended. I had both "live" albums until about 1999 until I foolishly loaned them. It is not hard to find the 1973 live album on the internet but the 1970 album seems to be almost non existent. Nevertheless I tracked one down by googling the exact code for the album. The 1970 concert album is still one of the most exciting gospel albums around.
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