Here Comes the Sun

St Mary’s Church, Haddington 31/5/25

Garleton Singers, director Stephen Doughty,

Arrangements of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Beethoven,

 It felt sunny on Saturday evening, sitting in St Mary’s. The sky, which had been grey all the way there, seemed bright behind the vast East window in front of us. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ celebrates the Beatles’ music, and the start of Garleton Singers’ summer vacation. The women of the choir wear a rainbow of bright self-coloured shirts, Director Doughty, his harlequin waistcoat. He has overcome his earlier discomfort with presenting commercial songs in a church setting, and tells us we are now not really “in church”. This temporary de-consecration means the audience can, and must, let rip and join in “lustily” later on.

 A smooth fade-in of “Ooos” led us straight in to ‘Eight Days a Week’ with lovely, if quiet, sounds from the altos. Then after ‘Help’, Garleton’s full range of voices and skills unfurled in Gottfried Bierey’s choral arrangement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. What’s Beethoven doing in amongst the Beatles? Rolling Over, perhaps?  Doughty tells us that Lennon became intrigued one day when Yoko Ono was playing Moonlight’s opening arpeggios on their piano. He started doodling with them:  backwards, forwards, and roundabout, eventually giving birth to the song ‘Because’.

 The choir duly slipped into a gorgeous rendition: “Because the world is round, it turns me on”; ebb and flow of volume woozy yet in perfect unison. Their intense focus carried on into an exquisite a capella arrangement of ‘Nowhere Man’ by Paul Ayres. Thoughtful and more sorrowful than the original, punctuated by staccato beams of “La-la-la”s from the tenors, invoking a Nowhere Man’s hollow insouciance. In the last moments the pitch swoops suddenly upwards as if in hope, only to stop short, balking at the final word.

 Musically this rendition was worthy of any church; and on the subject of churches, I had been wondering which Beatles’ number might be transposed to St Mary’s magnificent organ; Garleton’s resident pianist Caroline Cradock is also an eager organist.  The chosen tune turned out to be our show’s title, another powerful Ayers arrangement for solo keyboard: ‘Toccatina on Here Comes the Sun’.  This is a heady, complex piece, even virtuoso. It ramps George Harrison’s innocent ditty into pulsing energy and turmoil. Played on the organ with its lumbering reverberations, it becomes something manic. Cradock played magnificently, and, in the absence of an interval, lit up the concert’s half time with a dazzle of psychedelia. A bold and happy choice.

 A soothing ‘Let it Be’ followed, and a playful ‘Hard Day’s Night’ from the male voices, with rich percussive accompaniment and brass.  For the ‘Penny Lane’ solo Gregor Koziel had managed to find a rare piccolo trumpet, the instrument used in the original recording; he played it triumphantly. I was delighted that Doughty found room for his own sublime arrangement of ‘Blackbird’, which so impressed me last year: clear voices accompanied solely by Federico Bruera’s reverential guitar.

 The show ended with a long medley, by Emerson, of a dozen other songs, with the audience allowed judiciously to join in, following in the programme when the lyrics appeared in bold: a happy to-and-fro between enjoying a sing-along, and turning back to the choir, who continued to perform with polyphonic style. Only four fine voices punctuated the evening’s choral work, brief solo snippets of alto, two sopranos and a glorious, unexpected basso profundo. I would have liked to hear a few more moments from the soloists

 The show took just over an hour. As we left, the skies opened and we were uniformly drenched, but the audience was buoyant. Some were saying, “It was so short,” but “I just wanted it to go on for ever!”  Well, keep ‘em wanting more. I certainly do, and look forward to their collaboration with Iceland’s Vordukor Choir in October.

PS  There is an engaging short video demonstrating Lennon’s so-called “Backwards” Moonlight Sonata at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeG95UnWyFo