St. Nicholas' Cathedral, Newcastle. It was the post-covid return of a regular Christmas concert, which raises money for the Sir Bobby Robson foundation. 800-seats, all sold out.
Quite a few different singers from Tyneside, including Lorraine Crosby (who sang the 'I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) with Meatloaf), Jill Halfpenny, and the Canon of Newcastle Cathedral who, it turns out, is an amazing jazz vocalist.
I MD'd the show, which has its own challenges as we can't get all the artists in a room at the same time at any point beforehand. It also involves liaising with the choirmaster over the arrangements.
One of the artists had to pull out on the morning of the show due to ill health, so we had to quickly find two other singers to cover his songs in the same key and arrangement... a stressful morning, but somehow we managed it.
As usual we had a Rolls-Royce team in to do the PA - the acoustics are a nightmare for amplification, so we keep the stage and FOH volume down, and spread the boxes around the room.
Here's a clip of one of the songs, sung by Aaron from local up-and-comers Hector Gannet. He was one of the last-minute replacements, who we asked to sing the song that morning. He nailed it.
Here's some behind-the-scenes shots I took.