Two Sisters at Lee Abbey

The grand pudox match

At the end of July, Roger, Mary, Annie, Helen and Sally travelled down to Lee Abbey for our annual music week.  This year the musical was Two Sisters, and with the Abbey full we were looking forward to a great week.

Mary's Birthday

It was fantastic having Sally on the team again, and this year she brought her husband Karl.  She did a great job organising the drama and also leading a dance workshop while 8 months pregnant!  It was great to have Karl around too - he'd never been to anything like this before, and he managed really well.

The wonderful choir

Unlike previous years at Lee Abbey where Paul has come and trained the choir, this time Paul came and played piano for the orchestra, and Helen put the choir through their paces.  The orchestra were amazing - there were 6 violins, a viola, 4 cellos, 2 flutes, a trombone, a trumpet, a bass guitar, two acoustic guitars, a clarinet, an oboe, drums and the piano.  One of the biggest orchestras we've had, and they made a wonderful sound.

The enormous orchestra

One of the features of our weeks at Lee Abbey is the contribution made by the members of the community.  We had a wonderful team supporting our week, including Ben and Pippa, who have often been involved in our music weeks in the past.  The House team led some wonderful evening 'Christ in Quiet' sessions, and also led worship at various times.  On the Tuesday evening many of the team were involved in a wonderful international evening singing solos and playing instruments.  The Lee Abbey summer show on the Thursday evening was also really excellent - this year for the first time it was written by Caleb, the son of the warden.

The final performance was wonderful - it was kicked off in style by an oboe quintet.  Then we had some wonderful solos from a number of the guests, and some very dramatic narrations.  There was standing room only for the audience, and a brilliant atmosphere.