WE HEADED to the 2022 Derry International Choir Festival via the Goldline coach in rainbow weather. On arrival, it was clear the Maiden City was full of music. I saw a young man with violin running towards the bus station and choirs from places like Bristol and London were chatting on every corner clad in T-shirts proclaiming their names. The place seemed alive – yes – with the sound of music.
My personal highlight was taking part in The Big Sing Workshop. I learnt to sing, more or less, a Swedish folk song jazzed up in the 60s and written by our maestro, Anders Edenroth, also a Festival judge. It was mind and body blowing and totally uplifting.
About 100 of us gathered onstage in the Millennium Forum, many of them members of the choirs in competition and still in sequinned tops and jackets. We warmed up, did some rhythm stamping, learnt not to rush the beat – a top tip – then ventured into lay-dee-day, eventually in four parts. My weedy second soprano grew in confidence. And by the end, it was all smiles, a decent sound if not totally ABBA.
My husband Michael Conaghan and I then attended the glitzy International Choir Competition in Derry's Guildhall. His family is originally from Derry and he recalled sister Joanne, now a law professor, doing Irish dance there as a girl.
The musical standard was amazing: first, we were entertained big time by the Magnificent AKs, an English 'folk-plus' band who sang something old and something new, a humorous take on life with lines about husbands in sheds.
Then came the serious stuff and we heard two choirs from Dublin, Embla, a superbly expressive Norwegian choir, a college choir from Washington with confidence and finally the winners, the superb Eller Girls' Choir from Estonia. The judges had a totally unenviable task as you couldn't put a quaver between the finalists.
There were early, spare soundscapes from William Byrd and Tomas Luis de Victoria and we heard one number, Sean Doherty's highly dramatic Snow Dance for the Dead, twice. It was tackled by the Estonian choir and the Americans, in each case ending with the conductor collapsing as if kicking the bucket. Both versions were enjoyable, the Estonian version maybe crisper.
Then we moved from the sublime to the ridiculous as our nightcap in the hotel bar was accompanied by a doughty covers band belting out hits like Lay All Your Love on Me.
Before dinner, we'd heard some of the best choral music I have ever heard. Unsurprising, as the Johns' Boys Male Chorus from Wales won Choir of The World at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod a few years back. People gathered from all over the hotel just to listen.
Delayed in changing for dinner, we scampered into the City Hotel restaurant quite hungry. The menu was impressive, so too 90 per cent of the food. Great starters included a delicious goat's cheese and beetroot on bruschetta and an amazing warm salmon concoction.
The mains looked good. While my other half had a decent fish and chips, I made the mistake of ordering duck and developed menu envy as it was rubbery. However, the excellent Carla, our ace waitress, recommended beef cheek with mash and all was well.
This is a hotel I've been to before and would return to. Our family room was spacious with great urban views, costing £190 for a deal including breakfast and dinner for two.
Appropriately, after a slightly disappointing breakfast on Sunday, I headed out to enjoy the religious music part of the choral competition. The National Sacred Music Competition included the Johns' Boys Male Choir, again superb, who sang a clever arrangement of Steal Away (to Jesus). Up against youth choirs, a school choir from Dublin (the enthusiastic mummies applauded strongly in the audience), I hope they won.
There was also an imaginative Sacred Trail in which choirs, including our Norwegian friends, were matched to church services. We popped briefly into St Eugene's Cathedral round the corner as my late father-in-law, Billy, sang as a boy tenor there. As one of the founders of the SDLP, he had links to another cultural event in Derry, the John Hume exhibition, Hume: A Pilgrimage to the Light, at The Playhouse. In fact, you sense the presence of the great man everywhere and there's a nice portrait of Hume in the City Hotel dining room. We reminisced about meeting him a few years ago in town.
This was such a special visit to a city I know via my husband's family, with cousins here and there, that it felt we'd been away for a lot longer. Our final ritual was buying one of the sausage rolls in the bus station café, delish when warmed up, and a perfect snack on the journey home.
