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St. Mary's Singers (Members Handbook 1996)
The Singers were founded in 1969 by a group of ten enthusiastic men and women from St. Mary's Church Choir of Potton. Admission to the Society is attained by passing a simple voice test. The main aim of St. Mary's Singers is to sing for enjoyment and to give enjoyment and pleasure to others.
Their first Musical Director was Mr Tom Pargeter who remained with St. Mary's Singers until 1982.
Performances have ranged from Oratorio to Old Time Music Hall and from formal concerts such as Haydn's Harmony Mass and Carmina Burana to fully staged shows of Calamity Jane, Fiddler on the Roof, The Mikado and many more.
Over the years The Singers have sung in venues ranging from school halls to the Royal Albert Hall, from the local St. Mary's Church to St. Albans Cathedral, raising hundreds of pounds for charity in the process.
In 1983, St. Mary's Singers visited the Gemischter Chor in Langenlonsheim which is situated in the wine growing Nahe Valley in West Germany, to sing the Mozart Mass in C and to perform The Mikado. As a result of this visit, many friendships developed and the German choir visited Potton in 1985. The high spot of this visit was the show which took place in a Circus Big Top. In a combined concert and assisted by the North Herts Youth Orchestra, we played to our largest one-night audience of 1,400 people. The two choirs were twinned in 1987 on a return visit to Langenlonsheim. We have now visited and sung in Germany three times and the Gemischter Choir has also visited Potton three times and many good friendships have been made during this time. Their last visit was in 1996 and ours was in 2005.
The choir has developed a name for being a very friendly crowd of people. This reputation is well worth maintaining, so love thy neighbour even if he or she does sing the occasional flat note and help to make Wednesday night the high spot of the week.