Viva Valencia! Sutton High choir travel to the famous southern Spanish city

Is there a better way to spend the last week of school than in Spain?  In the penultimate week of the summer term, Sutton High choir travelled to the southern city of Valencia to perform a variety of songs to a range of audiences.  We toured around, sightseeing beautiful landmarks and places that captured the awe of a European lifestyle.  The places were packed with tourists, discovering the ancient markets in the centre of Valencia, getting lost in the cobblestones, weaving in and out between old and new and buying memorable artifacts and a lot of ice cream.

We performed three very different concerts; one on top of an historic hillside village, where the audience was big, not usually so surprising, but it did coincide with a big football match between Spain and Germany*.  The audience in the Basilica were moved, stunned by the wonderful acoustics of the harmonies that we sang in old Valencia.  There, under a rich tapestry of history and fixed on the grandeur of the holy place, some in the audience were left crying because of the wonderfully moving pieces.  The third venue was in a culture centre, a long walk through an old town with the keyboard and our booklet of songs. The standing ovation we had at the end was inspiring and only surpassed by the desire of the locals to have their picture taken with us on the beautiful stone steps outside.

The hills were really alive in Spain.

*Spain won!

By a Year 11 student