Rock Tour 2 - Ipswich

And on to our second new venue of the tour - Ipswich. We have long had many friends in Suffolk and the surrounding areas - Colchester, West Mersea, Stowmarket to name just a few. So it was great to finally have an Ipswich performance. The Christmas before last, Helen and Annie had been invited to lead an Inn Crowd in a day at Bethesda Baptist Church in the middle of Ipswich. The organiser, Peter Miller, along with his wife Olive, had done an incredible job organising that day - a choir of approximately 100, and an orchestra of 15 or so. With so much support and enthusiasm behind him, we rather bullied Peter into organising an Ipswich venue for Rock, and what a wonderful job he did!

After our morning team meeting in Worthing, we set off on the long journey through the Dartford Tunnel to Ipswich. On arrival we discovered that although the Technicians had had some difficulty, things were well under way. Peter had managed to pull together a massive choir for the performance, and choir seats were filling up every inch of the stage that could be spared - a huge chunk of the tenors and basses were directly behind the musicians, which gave them a new perspective on the performance!

The Corn Exchange in Ipswich is like a big old... corn exchange. It looks inside like an old railway station - most of the audience seats were on the flat below the stage, but there was some tiering in the balcony and just below it. It holds about 800 people, and for the performance of Rock, was pretty much sold out, which was very exciting. We heard not long after arriving that over the past few years in Ipswich there had been low attendances at shows, and the hall staff were amazed to have a full auditorium. Sadly we discovered that on the day of the performance some of the hall staff had been made redundant. We pray that Rock will have had a big impact on them.

After our team meeting we had a good pray around the building - it is amazing some of the things that happen in a public hall that need clearing away - psychics, seances, mediums.

The Ipswich team (there must have been at least 20 volunteers helping on the day) had put together a wonderful tea for us of jacket potatoes and fillings, which gave us plenty of energy for the performance. We had a good rehearsal with the choir - and an important one too - we needed to get used to wading through choir members in order to get on to the performing area!

The performance went well too - both Helen and Alyson had family in the audience, which was wonderful. Amy managed to play for half of the musical, and had to come off following the crucifixion scene because she was coughing, but at least she made it that far!

Thanks so much to Peter, Olive and their extensive team of helpers and all the different choir trainers - Mike Arbon, David White, Karen Hill, Pat Kirby. What a wonderful event it was.