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At "Gleneagles" Nursing Home in Hope Valley, a north-eastern Adelaide suburb after an early evening show, which is not usually the rule - they are mostly afternoons. The photo was by Gleneagles staff member.
At "Aldersgate" Nursing Home in Felixstow, with only three of us. We had clashed with the Australian Football League Grand Final, on the occasion that Adelaide's team won the league cup for the second year in a row! However, we had some twenty residents turn out for our concert, and we all listened to the match over a 'cuppa' afterwards. Go, Crows!
Photo by Aldersgate staff member Linda Clark.
An afternoon presentation at the "Elderly Citizens' Homes" at Walkerville, an inner eastern Adelaide suburb. This time we were up against a weekly indoor bowls competition. Even so, nearly forty residents attended, and they invited us back in 1999 on a non-bowls afternoon! Photo by ECH staff member Hennie Templeton.
"Barton Vale" in Enfield - an inner northern suburb, in another early evening presentation during a very warm "daylight saving" evening when about fifty residents attended.
Photo by Barton Vale staff member Chris.
This had led on to the teaching of alternative worship songs with deeper meaning than some of those up-tempo contemporary songs in use in many places. This repertoire of worship songs by Murray, and the oratorio, both teach us the need for each of us to develop relational skills between the individual and not just the Almighty but also with other members of the Body of Christ, who are just that, elemental parts of the tangible Lord Jesus Christ here upon earth.
Until Anzac Day in 1994, the "Vision One" choir of Adelaide had been presenting bi-monthly hour-long programmes of extracts in a number of churches around the metropolitan area, on Sunday nights, with a choir of about seventy voices, accompanied by a small orchestra. Eventually this series of "worship concerts" finished, and a number of the participants had been heard to express a wish for the message of hope and unity to be continued to be presented to the community at large.
The two members of the mixed duet felt led to actually do something about that, and they expanded into a trio in September 1996 specifically to present several pieces from the work at an outreach in an occasionally used church in an inner industrial suburb, an outreach which has since developed into an ongoing mission.
It was then decided to present an ongoing repertoire of songs that were singable by just three or four voices in harmony, and accompanied by just a piano, targeting an audience that was largely immobile. It was a tall order to select such a repertoire from the oratorio, and literally hundreds of hours were expended trying this piece, and that piece, and eventually a coherent programme of ten songs and six narrations was able to be put together.
The second male singer had joined the new group on a short-term basis because of his difficulty with combining working for a living with our mostly weekday afternoon presentations. Another lady joined, but the group was frequently reduced to three, which actually made a better volume balance, more easily acchieved with two ladies and one man.
The selection of which harmonies out of the (frequently) seven vocals in each piece were experimented, and indeed still are at each rehearsal. While a degree of compromise was unavoidable, we believe that we have been able to portray the composer's intent, and indeed back in mixed-duet days, correspondence with him over which harmonies he would prefer us to use in a specific song written for three ladies resulted in a delightful reply indicating his support for whatever we felt suited our particular voices.
We have carried this same thinking forward into our current trio, and we hope that those to whom we present this work are encouraged in their faith, with a positive hope in their last period of time on this earth.
Of course, this programme of highlights still carries the basics of Murray's original message of God having a plan to gather His dispersed people to His presence, it occuring in God's timing and not ours, and not in mankind's ways but according to His unchangeable Word.
This page created on 13th August, 1999, using the Australian HTML editor "FlexED".