Christmas Party 2014 - at Wardija
On 7th December, the Porters held their Christmas party in the playroom at Palazzo Promontorio, There were 100 guests and 10 band members. The evening took the form of a carol session with wordsheets handed out.The surprise for the friends attending was that each table of 10 had 10 pieces of assorted percussion waiting for them. Some were shy and initially were perturbed by the sight of tambourines, triangles, shakers, bells, tambours and some very odd items brought from the Porters' travels abroad! The majority, however soon started crashing and banging, and the band had to wrest control and bring some sort of order to the proceedings.
Celtic Connections play their carols at a medieval pace - quite speedy - and in a traditional rhythm with Good King Wenceslas played more like a polka than the sonorous renditions often heard. This is always our opening carol as everyone rises to the rhythm and in no time at all, everyone, including the doubters, were wielding their instruments with vigour! We play a few truly medieval carols, which usually go down well. We also sang a couple in Maltese for our numerous Maltese friends who were with us. Some of them complimented us on our pronunciation of what is a very difficult language, but others found it highly amusing.
After the carols, we dined on Christmas fare, and all the while folk were lubricating their vocal cords which had taken a bashing!
The band followed by our usual session (the party was on a scheduled session night), which was really just for the musicians, but most of the guests stayed to listen to us playing our traditional music for another hour or so.
These parties are great fun, but very hard work with rehearsals, learning new tunes, and general planning. So they don't happen every year, but we try to manage one every other year. The music is the element for a very different evening, and both guests and musicians went home happy.