… but we haven’t performed in competition for a few years now.
Friday May 16th 2014
We competed in the Mayo International Choral Festival and took first prize in the Gaelic/Celtic Language competition with Deirdre Moynihan’s arrangement of the well-known Óró sé so bheatha bhaile and Ieuan Wyn’s recent eisteddfod-medal-winning Cariad.
Saturday 16th March 2002
Rudsambee entered the Mixed Voice category at the Coleraine International Choral Festival and won a prize! Third prize, since you ask. And no, there’s no trophy to show you, but there was some money – very useful to defray our travelling expenses. What’s more, there was a bottle of Coleraine whiskey (a top quality product of Bushmills distillery) for every group that entered. Your correspondent very nearly missed out on that, because he listened through the Male Voice competition in the evening while most of the rest of Rudsambee, er, relaxed after their exertions. Luckily, the surviving fraction of their conscience obliged them to buy another bottle to let me find out what it tastes like. In this, as in all things, the Coleraine Festival was a joy from beginning to end. Our thanks to the organisers!
We don’t enter many competitions, but we have had some success before.
Saturday 23rd May 1998: Rudsambee entered two classes in the 1998 Edinburgh Competitive Music Festival, and won three first prizes.
Honesty compels us to admit that this really big trophy was for the mixed voices class, in which we were the only entrants. In the sacred music class, and in the final, we were competing against a highly-trained competitive choir who do win prizes themselves; so we feel we have something to be proud of.
And there’s more! We picked up a couple of awards at the 1997 Livingston Compose-a-Song competition – but the World Wide Web isn’t ready for that story yet.
