Gay Abandon - West Yorkshire's lgb choir: most recent

Gay Abandon were delighted to present an afternoon of mostly classical music. We began with two songs from the English tradition - Charles Wood's setting of Full Fathom Five and John Dowland's madrigal Come Again.

Hazel (Soprano) and Jenny (Alto) continued the John Dowland theme with Flow my tears and then started a sequence of numbers by Leonard Bernstein with the second movement of his Chichester Psalms.

The choir sang two songs from West Side Story - One Hand and Tonight, capturing the devotion and the excitment of people in love.

Our guest - and one-time member of the choir, Jaime Jo Hallam sang two songs by Gabriel Faure before the choir returned with three songs by local gay composers.

David Fligg wrote King David to words by Walter de la Mare. We sang it at our first concert in 1998 and were delighted to sing it again - and welcome David into the audience. The next two songs were written by one of our own - Ian Akroyd (bass) wrote Love's Philosophy which we performed for the first time last year, and then Different Drummer which we performed - to huge acclaim - for the first time today. Ian also conducted this piece - the first time he has done so publicly. Ian's pieces are challenging to perform, but the choir has loved doing them, and the audience seemed to love them too.

In the second half we performed two short pieces from the United States' choral tradition: Simple Gifts is an Aaron Copland arrangement of a Shaker song, and Samuel Barber's Sure on this Shining Night has rapidly become one of the choir's favourites.

Then the choir had a rest - well most of us did - while Jenny (Alto) and Madeline (Soprano) played five scenes from the Carnival of the Animals, and Jaime Hallam treated us to a couple of operatic numbers.

Then the choir returned, with two Scottish songs (My love is like a red red rose and Will ye no come back again) before our finale, Jane Edwardson's rousing arrangement of Drunken Sailor.

And then it was all over bar the back-slapping and drinking. Six month's hard work learning this set, but we loved it. Our audience seemed to as well. And here's what Shout! had to say about it:

"Gay Abandon premiered their exquisitely beautiful new material on Sunday, in Class Act, a concert at Leeds College of Music. They took on the challenge of some very difficult pieces, several of which have been written specially for the choir.

"And the result is joyous and moving by turns! One Hand by Leonard Bernstein had a special poignance sung as a gay love song, and Different Drummer, conducted by the composer Ian Akroyd, was a powerful and subtle hymn to diversity.

Class Act (Summer Concert 2007)