We’ve arrived! It was a long old flight, made longer thanks to some stereotypical London fog but Surrey Harmony has landed in Houston safe and sound.
We are here to compete in the Sweet Adelines International Finals on Thursday afternoon and we’ll be keeping you updated on our exploits throughout the week. Don’t forget you can watch our performance in the semi finals, live on the Sweet Adeline’s Webcast. We are contestant 28 and due on stage at 6.15pm (Houston time) on Thursday 20th October. If you are watching from the UK, it’ll be just after midnight on Thursday night, going into Friday morning. To catch a piece of the action, visit: http://sweetadswebcast.com/ . In the meantime, we’ll be keeping you updated daily here at SurreyHarmony.com
After arriving on Sunday, we barely had time to check into our hotel, when we had to head out again to perform at the Worldwide Region Show. What a fantastic evening! We performed alongside Ronninge from Sweden, New Zealand’s Christchurch City, Perth Harmony and the UK’s very own Milltown Sound and Lace City. The Quartets were well represented too, by Salt, Finesse and Even Tide amongst others. Surrey Harmony gave a great performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” causing some members of the audience to shed a few tears.
Monday and it’s tourist time. After a brief meeting to welcome everyone, members of the chorus dispersed in the direction of the Galleria Mall, NASA Space Center and Downtown Houston itself. But everyone was back and ready for our first state-side rehearsal at 5pm! Now the hard work really starts.
After rehearsal, the chorus hit the town for an evening at The House of Blues, some fine food and great atmosphere, and just a touch of Sweet Adelines singing.
Tuesday arrived and it was time for our first rehearsal on the international risers at the convention center. Resplendant in our new red T-shirts we gave it our all and made a great sound in such a huge empty space. We were thrilled to see two of Surrey Harmony’s favourite coaches at the rehearsal, Diane Porsch and Carole Kirkpatrick. Diane will be hosting the webcast of the competition on Thursday, don’t forget to tune in. It was also fantastic to see Ex-Surrey Harmony member Lisa Mark who popped by with some very encouraging feedback.
The day ended with another rehearsal, but not before we’d had a chance to see the UK’s Milltown Sound and Sweden’s Alba Show Chorus compete in the Harmony Classic competition. It was a fantastic evening with impressive performances from both small choruses! Congratulations to Alba Chorus who were the Division A winners, and to Metro Nashville who were the Division AA winners.