Anniversaries and Old Friends

Sarah Gray
Aug 18
3 min read

I love this time of year - new term, new notebook, new songs (or are they..... more of that in a minute). Sitting down to plan for the Autumn and Winter makes me rub my hands in anticipation. I did it just then.

I'm not a person who really dwells on the past, but I have taken a moment to think about some important 'work birthdays' happening this year and next and want to reflect on what they mean.

Stretch & Sing is 10 years old this year, and has brought me personally a great deal of joy and wellbeing. It's down to the relationship I have with Becca Poremba, just a beautiful soul with a strong work ethic! Our yoga and singing sessions are carefully thought-out, we love to share our honest feelings about how we feel, what we need and what we can offer in our unique workshops. We are VERY excited to be going on our first Stretch & Sing tour this Autumn - 2 of the dates are shown below - in beautiful Scotland. We may even do a video blog!

Harbour Lights, the choir I lead, is 15 years old this year. It was started by a friend of mine, Flora Smith, with the help of 20,000 Voices - remember that excellent organisation? I will definitely be making a bit of a fuss about this in the coming months but I just want to reflect on the unexpected joy of connecting with a wonderful group of people. As someone who has worked in community music for decades, I feel this choir shows what community is all about and I love them.

Speaking of people I love, I was lucky enough to meet up with Alison Scott and Jilly Jarman recently. Among the many, many ways she has helped me, Jilly introduced me to Alison and my longest-running working collaboration began. We love working together - gigging, writing, leading.... mostly (like Ant and Dec!) just being friends. It's an honour to still have these two amazing women in my life. It's a friendship of over 22 years.

The biggest anniversary coming up is next year: our 20 YEAR celebration of Soup & Sing! Can you believe it? We held our first 'one off' (ha ha!) workshop in December 2006 in Mosedale Meeting House in Cumbria. It set the tone (oh dear, almost a musical pun there) for the future in that the weather was shockingly bad, in this case biblical rain. 24 (steaming) people packed themselves in with us and something fabulous started. We barely knew what we were doing then (we do now!!), but a great many of those people have stuck with us over the years and their support and loyalty knows no bounds. THANK YOU. Same to the Northumberland Crew who hit the ground running a few years later and have been similarly staunch supporters. We know who you are and we think you are ACE.

Soup & Sing has been a family affair from the start. Alison's daughters and close friends have always been involved as cooks, as has my lovely Mum Myra. My sister Rachel the Soup Dragon does our prep on the Northumbrian side helped by Marianne, and many of the participants on both sides of the country know the drill so well they just aim straight for the tea-making and the washing up! It would be hard to run Soup & Sing without the help of all these angels.

The last group of old friends I want to talk about can't argue with me - at least not in a straightforward way ..... they are the songs. We are revisiting our enormous back catalogue of songs for our Twentieth Year (actually pre-empting that, starting now) and bringing many of them back into the sunshine. Some will have developed, as have we, been polished and expanded as we explored them in workshops and at online Morning Zings. Some have been written by us for Soup & Sing, or for other events. Some are borrowed from friends, some stolen from the ancient past! But all are worth the effort to embrace and share.

Sharing is our aim, our passion, and we can't do that without people. Here are some photos of a small proportion of the friends that share my musical life. They are only the most recent ones, so lots of wonderful folk are missing. And there is always room for more..... Hope to see you all soon!