Ireland Day 9 - Limerick Sings

The day started for us at 9:15am after breakfast with a rehearsal in the concert hall on campus. Together with the other choirs participating in the festival, we learned an arrangement of 'Sweet child of mine'. The choral arrangement was written by David Brophy, who also conducted the rehearsal and managed to put together a decent performance with nearly 200 singers in just over an hour. From the rehearsal, all the choirs went directly to the buses and headed to the Cliffs of Moher, which were 70 km away and reached shortly after 12pm. A television crew accompanied us. Once we arrived at the cliffs, we stood close together and sang the previously learned piece three times in different formations. It was less about the sound, as it wouldn't have been meaningful in the strong winds, but rather about the camera team being able to capture some great shots. The created feature will air on Irish television on Sunday evening, and a link will be sent to us by the organizers and published here: https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2022/0612/1304377-cliffs-moher-choir/

The cliffs were definitely very impressive, and despite the strong winds and rain, we had a lot of fun. After the Cliffs of Moher, the NKC went on to the soundcheck at 3:45pm at the Redemptorist Church. Initially, we positioned ourselves in the space between the altar and the first row of benches, but we found this position acoustically challenging for our a cappella pieces as we couldn't hear each other well, so we moved (with the church's approval) to behind the altar, which we preferred much more. The rehearsal went really well and focused, and we were very excited for our final concert on this trip.
Back on campus, we had spaghetti bolognese and vegetable stir-fry with rice for dinner, then we retreated to the apartments and prepared for the concert. We went back to the Redemptorist Church in concert attire just before 8pm. Since the concert at 8:30pm was part of the 'Limerick Sings' festival, three other choirs performed that evening alongside us. The 'Limerick Youth Choir & Cantette' started, followed by the 'Limerick Choral Union', who sang 'For the beauty of the earth' by John Rutter and three movements from the Fauré Requiem, which we had also sung ourselves again on Maundy Thursday in April. After that, 'Aoide Voices' performed, singing, among other things, 'A million dreams' from the famous film 'The greatest Showman'. We ended the concert with a set of five pieces. We started with 'Bogoroditse Devo' and 'Shenandoah'. For 'Immortal Bach', we couldn't take our usual circular formation around the audience in this church, but to still convey the effect of the piece, we distributed ourselves mixed across the entire area of the sanctuary. For the fourth piece 'Take it to the Lord in Prayer', where we were accompanied by the fabulous Alwina Meissner on the piano, we formed a semi-circle around the piano in front of the altar, and for the last piece 'Nearer my God', we returned to our position behind the altar. The audience was delighted and rewarded us with a standing ovation. An encore was requested, and so we sang 'An Irish Blessing' as the conclusion of the concert, but also as the last piece on our journey, and the lyrics 'And until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of his hand' meant even more. After the concert, we were showered with praise and compliments. We are very happy that we were so well received by the audience and the other choirs, and we are quite proud of our performance that evening :)
We spent our last evening on the campus grounds in the pavilion, with music and dancing. There we also met the choir 'Belle Voci', who praised us again for our performance and at midnight couldn't resist singing 'Happy birthday' to NKC birthday boy Magnus after our rendition of 'Viel Glück und viel Segen'. It was a successful final evening!