The prospect of a holiday in sunny Spain would be enough to make most people sing with joy, but an actual singing vacation is a novel idea. Lee Coulter and his partner Doreen Berrington just returned from such an adventure.
Coulter loves to sing and is a member of the Powell River Academy of Music Chamber Choir. He wanted to enjoy some music while the couple travelled, and looked online for a singing holiday.
“I was searching for a group that organized a choral experience with a tour in mind,” said Coulter. “But I wanted to be fairly serious about this because I sing in the chamber choir here, so I wanted a comparable level of experience.”
Coulter found UK-based Run by Singers, which has been arranging singing vacations and weekends since 2003. He and Berrington participated in a singing week in the town of El Puerto de Santa María, in the southern sherry-producing region of the country not far from the city of Cadiz and the Rock of Gibraltar. Barrington did not sing, but thoroughly enjoyed the holiday.
“We were staying in this glorious five-star hotel,” she said. “ I let the group go off to rehearsal each morning and sat on the patio and had a nice breakfast.”
Choristers rehearsed each morning in an old monastery in the town, and after enjoying a traditional siesta would meet again for an early evening rehearsal and dinner.
“They are quite serious,” Coulter said of the group. “We did 15 pieces ranging from late Renaissance to modern. Because we were in Spain we did about a third of the program in Spanish, but we also sang in English, French, German, Hungarian, Swedish and Latin.”
After five days of rehearsing, the final concert was held on a Saturday evening in El Puerto at the small San Francisco parish church. The finished product was worth the effort, according to Berrington.
“Oh, the sound,” she said. “They hit that first note and the sound just filled that church. It was amazing and just reverberated off the walls and the ceiling.”
After completing the singing week, the couple travelled to other parts of Spain before returning home.
“It was a wonderful experience,” said Coulter. “We’ve already been looking at their offerings for next year. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who wants to have a similar experience.”
