13 March Update

Week 9

This week you can read about:

• Rehearsal update

• Dates for the diary:

  • Sunday 6 April - West Norwood Feast

  • Saturday 14 June (TBC) - Crystal Palace Park "London Festival of Architecture"

• Pulse survey results

• COTH WhatsApp Groups

• Song facts: What Happens When a Woman

Rehearsal

At this week's rehearsal we focused on What Happens When a Woman - this time introducing the 2 separate soprano parts and the alto harmony. The song requires a lot of focus but we made great progress and are beginning to see how powerful it will sound when performed. Elena has re-recorded the different harmonies and these will be uploaded to the Lyric & Audio Library asap. We will also produce a lyric sheet which will help us more easily visualise how each part fits together. If you are interested in the background to the song, you can read more in the Song Facts section at the end of the bulletin.

We also started work on It's Alright, a song by The Impressions. The verses of the song will be sung by 3 separate duos with the backing vocals/chorus sung in harmony by the rest of the choir.

DATES FOR THE DIARY

SUNDAY 6 APRIL West Norwood Feast  

We're singing at West Norwood Feast https://westnorwoodfeast.com, a 'volunteer powered self-funded street food market festival'. This is a community event with around 100 stalls set up across three hubs along the high street in West Norwood. We will be singing on the the Artisans stage near the leisure centre from 14.30 - 15.00. More details will follow but you can REGISTER for the event, via our Performing page.

TBC SATURDAY 14 JUNE Crystal Palace Park: Festival of Architecture  

We are in talks with Crystal Palace Park Trust about taking part in the event they are hosting in June as part of this year's London Festival of Architecture. The theme of the festival is 'voices' (https://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/2025-festival). Their idea is to have different choirs/performances in various locations in the Park. Visitors would then be encouraged to explore the Park through sound.

This could be a very exciting opportunity for us and we'll share more information as soon as we have it.

PULSE SURVEY RESPONSES

Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill in our quick pulse survey. The good news is that 100% of responders felt that they had enough opportunity to input their ideas into our song choices. We also asked you how happy you are with the new songs we've been singing, the harmonies and the range of song types and genres:

In the free text / extra comments box several of you mentioned how much you enjoyed singing Hallelujah I Just Love Him So and What Happens When a Woman. You also said that you would like more opportunities to sing solo lines within songs (like we do for You've Got a Friend). There were calls for more folk and world music as well as praise for our new WhatsApp group for sharing and discussing music/ideas for the choir.

The results and your thoughts and suggestions have been shared with Elena and will help us form our repertoire through the rest of the year.

COTH WhatsApp groups

Yes, we know - there is a WhatsApp group for everything these days but, as we have had a few new members, we thought it would be a good time to provide some detail about the groups you could join and what they are for.

COTH Notices

Whilst the rest of our groups are optional, this is the one group we would like you to join. As the title would suggest, it's a one-way messaging group for updates and notices about COTH.

DIVA! The COTH Chat Group

This is a community group for COTH members to chat and engage over COTH rehearsals, performances and other choir activity. Topics may range around the fields of singing and music. Other community events etc and other offshoot topic-specific groups may be signposted only, but the conversations should be fundamentally focussed on COTH.

COTH - Social DIVAS

This group is for arranging and discussing COTH social events and, occasionally, events, performances etc happening outside of COTH. Please speak to Naomi if you would like to be added to this group.

COTH 2025 Setlist

This is the group for sharing song links, ideas, possibilities for us to learn and perform this year. It includes the list already compiled from the song box. Please speak to Naomi if you would like to be added to this group.

SONG FACTS - What Happens When a Woman, Alexandra Olsavsky

The new song in our repertoire, What Happens when a Woman by Alexandra Olsavsky, is proving very popular with our choir.

Olsavsky, the song's composer, is the founding member of the trio known as Artemisia. The group performs new works by living female composers and shares their stories on Facebook. These collaborations, and Artemisia's own compositions, focus on empowering and uplifting women - to 'amplify women's voices'. The name of the group is in honour of three women: Artemisia of Caria, a queen of the ancient Greek city-state of Halicarnassus; Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi; and Artemis, the Greek goddess.

What Happens When a Woman, is a song for 'the strong women of our world who seek to empower themselves by asking important questions'. The song asks what happens when a woman stands on her own feet, takes charge of her own body, rises up and works as one. It's a song about justice and equality for women and it has been performed by over 1500 ensembles worldwide. Below is a YouTube link to the song performed by Artemisia using body percussion.

If you are interested in Olsavsky, Artemisia or the history of women in music, this very interesting article goes into a lot more detail about Artemisia's work and gives suggestions for further reading: https://inspiredchoir.com/what-happens-when-a-woman/