Community concert lights up winter holidays in Tea Gardens

MUSICIANS gathered from across the Hunter to rock out some family-friendly tunes for a special winter’s concert, held at the Tea Gardens Baptist Church on Sunday 13 July.

The main stage feature was the Newcastle Fellowship Band, as well as top billing for the Myall University of the Third Age (MU3A) Chorists, and a special appearance by More Than Sisters duo Meredyth and Lou from Bulahdelah.

Led by conductor Stan Webster, and hailing all the way from their monthly practices in Rutherford, the Newcastle Fellowship Band is a Christian community brass band with a purpose, playing at charity, church and seniors’ events around the Hunter.

The band’s members range in age from 30 to 91, and the all-brass ensemble has everything from cornets to trumpets, trombones, horns and tubas.

Standout songs for the band included universal singalong favourite ‘Sweet Caroline’, the hymnic ‘Ave Maria’, a rollicking ‘500 Miles’, ‘Highland Cathedral’ (usually the domain of bagpipes), and ‘Happy And You Know It’, which got everyone on their feet and moving.

Bulahdelah duet act, More Than Sisters, brought forth the choral talents of Meredyth and Lou, both of whom have long, proud roots in the region going back a number of generations.

The sisters sang duets, playing roles from musicals: the wife and the mistress from ‘I Know Him So Well’ from the musical ‘Chess’; and transforming into witches Glinda and Elphaba’s in ‘For Good’, from ‘Wicked: Part 2’.

Meredyth delivered some heart-felt solo songs, ‘Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue’ and ‘Get Happy’, each a change of pace, and interwoven with the band and the Myall U3A choir’s well-practiced vocalisms.

The Myall U3A Choir, having successfully reformed after the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, was led at the concert by Richard Gray, accompanied by pianist Bev Ettinghausen, and featured over 40 voices.

From rolling rounds in ‘Music Alone Shall Live’, to hair-raising soprano in ‘Gaudete’, and strong, resonant chants within ‘Why We Sing’ that rumbled the room, the audience of over 130 people enjoyed every minute.

By Thomas O’KEEFE