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Covid permitting, we are looking forward to an exciting year in 2022. After two rehearsals on zoom at the beginning of January, we are back to in-person rehearsals and working hard to prepare to take part in the BABS Convention in Harrogate on 30 April.

As always, we will aim to perform as well as possible, but it will be wonderful to be back on the Convention stage and share our love of harmony with all our friends from the Barbershop community.

On 8 February we were treated to a stimulating coaching session by the wonderfully talented David Sangster, Chorus Director of the award winning Forth Valley Chorus, and we are all eagerly looking forward to two more sessions in March and April.

Plans are also being finalised for three performances in the Edinburgh Fringe at St Cuthbert’s Church on Friday 26 August at 7.30pm and Saturday 27 August at 3.00pm and 7.30pm. We cannot wait to share with you the songs that we have been learning.

Despite the disappointment of having to cancel our Christmas concert, we managed to finish 2021 on a high note with two wonderful Saturday mornings of carol singing, where we raised a total of £1,315 for Prostate Scotland and £450 For Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity.

What’s more, thanks to the generosity of many of our potential audience at our Christmas Concert, who chose for their refunded ticket money to be donated to charity, we have so far raised a further £900, to be shared between the two charities.

That’s a total of £2,665 going to two very worthwhile causes.

Although it has been a difficult year, we are still going strong and, after a break to spend time with friends and family over Christmas and New Year, we will all be eager to return to rehearsals on Tuesday 11th January at Polwarth Church, when we will begin preparations for the two major events in our calendar :

• taking part in the national Barbershop contest at the BABS convention in April
• performing a brand new show at the Edinburgh Fringe in August

We can’t wait !

We are thrilled to present to you our virtual chorus of “Loch Lomond”!  Arranged by Peter Bryant, this has become one of our favourite songs to perform and was a centrepiece of our 2019 Fringe Show “Distilled in Scotland: 100% Harmony”.

Huge thanks go to chorus members Geoff Stockham for audio editing and Brian Ó Conaill for video editing.  We feel very fortunate to have talented members who can help us produce videos like this and we hope this will be the first of many!

For us it has been great to be able to put something together to show for the past 6 months in the absence of live performances.  So, whilst we can’t perform for you all in person right now, we hope you enjoy watching this as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you. We can’t wait to sing for you again soon!

Click here to see our Virtual Chorus

In 2019 we established the Nick Hayes Award, named in memory of our late friend and former Director.  It is awarded to the member of the Chorus, chosen by the members, who has made the most outstanding contribution to the Chorus during the year.  At our 2020 AGM this week, Geoff Stockham was announced as this year’s recipient of the award.  In thanking the Chorus for the award, Geoff paid tribute to the support and encouragement that he had received from Nick when he joined the Chorus in 2013.

Because of the Coronavirus restrictions we were unable to make the presentation at the AGM.  Fortunately, we were able to make particularly appropriate alternative arrangements, and on the day following the AGM we were delighted that Ann Hayes, Nick’s widow, was able to make the presentation at a memorial bench, recently erected in Nick’s memory, at Leadburn Woods, Penicuik.

It was a strange experience to have our Annual General Meeting on zoom, but it didn’t prevent us from making a special presentation of a commemorative quaich to recognise our longest serving member, Walter Dods, who has been a member of the Chorus for 25 years.

Walter told how he had joined the Chorus in 1995, after being taken by a friend to see him perform with them on the back of a lorry.  He said that at the time he thought ‘that would be fun to try’ and never envisaged that he would still be doing it 25 years later.  He described how Barbershop singing had opened up a whole new avenue in his life, ending by toasting all past, present and future members of the Chorus.

We’re so excited to be playing a small part in The British Association of Barbershop Singers #SingSeptember with our open rehearsal on Tuesday 22nd September.

Fancy joining us for an evening of pie, poetry and song? Email us at contact@rollinghills.org.uk for the Zoom details. We hope to see you there!