The Doha Singers’ winter concert took a different form this year. PICTURE: TK Nasser
By Fran Gillespie/Doha

The popular annual Doha Singers’ winter concert, for many years a tradition in Doha, took a different form this year under new director Liz Thomas, who has replaced ASD music teacher Bob Krebs. Departing from the recent pattern of performances shared with the Doha Community Orchestra, it launched into a varied programme more like that of  a cabaret, with solo guitar and songs by Todd Perilloux and a monologue by Doha Players veteran actor and director Ian Lacey.
The 60-strong choir of the Doha Singers sang a variety of traditional British and transatlantic carols, including the much-loved 16th century ‘Coventry Carol’ and ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ from the early 18th century, plus more recent favourites including ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Deck the Halls.’ The large audience in the auditorium at The College of the North Atlantic-Qatar joined with enthusiasm in some of the well-known lyrics.
In the past, the Doha Singers festive concert programmes have been mainly restricted to seasonal music, which included excerpts from Handel’s Messiah, haunting medieval Latin carols and traditional French, German and Spanish carols. This year’s programme featured several numbers that had no apparent connection with the forthcoming celebrations, such as melodies from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and ‘You’re A Mean One, Mr Grinch’  -- mystifying unless one happened to have seen Dr Seuss’s 1966 movie ‘How the Grinch stole Christmas’!
The latter was popular with the many youngsters among the audience, as was Ian Lacey’s take on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’, when the only mouse stirring was the one in the hand of a young computer hacker!
The six members of the Desert Wind Flute Choir, which includes long-term Doha flautists Ray Ramsden and Pat Smith, played the music from the American composer Neidlinger’s carol ‘The Birthday of a King’, and from a French and an Austrian carol, and accompanied the Singers in ‘Angels We Have Heard on High.’ The flute music blended well with the voices and received appreciative applause from the audience.

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