My choir are featured on ITV, I get Covid and miss some great gigs.

Listening to: Grupo Lokito ‘Bolingo Ya Londres’

Ah, Covid. I’ve been expecting you.

But did you have to get me on the VERY DAY that my wonderful refugee and asylum seeker choir were to be featured on national TV?? Gaaah.

As you know we were fundraising to keep this incredible singing group open as the costs of running hybrid rehearsals and providing devices / tech support for our most vulnerable members have been crippling. So this is actually a good news story, for although I didn’t get to go on TV and play my original arrangements with them, they did a brilliant job without me, under the stunning guidance of Mixed up Chorus’s Jeremy Haneman, and have raised enough money to keep us going another year!

My Covid wasn’t awful, but it did take me six weeks to fully recover, and I missed SO many gigs I had been looking forward to. I had to come to terms with it. Felt like a modern day Pollyanna. But here are the great regular nights you can still catch:

Grupo Lokito at Peckhams CLF lounge – If you haven’t hear Congolese- Cuban fusion before, I highly recommend you try it. Even more fun than it sounds.

Peng Femme Jam at 93 Feet East – Fortnightly event highlighting. instrumentalists of colour who identify as Female and non binary. WHY HAS IT TAKEN UNTIL 2022 FOR THIS TO BE A THING?! Great great nights, highly recommend.