Glee club to hold variety concert
The Pearl Beach Glee Club's Variety Concert will be held on Friday, August 10, at 7:30pm and Saturday, August 11, at 2:30pm.
The program will include vocal and instrumental items, community singing and mini-dramas.
Glee Club members will perform The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter, a short melodramatic story set in and around a lighthouse.
There's unrequited love, murder, a maiden in distress, and a hero who saves the day, and all except the villain live happily ever after.
Members of the Pearl Beach Youth Theatre will perform Puss in Slippers, written by English clergyman and poet Rev Canon Richard Tydeman, who described it as "a piano mini-drama with no boots on".
This short, one-act play in rhyming verse is based on the well known story Puss in Boots.
Musical director and concert producer Ms Diane Orton said: "Choir members have had a lot of fun and lots of laughs while rehearsing the concert program."
"Singing is actually good for your health as it exercises a range of muscles and makes you feel happy.
"It bonds people together and keeps you young.
"We invite everyone to come along and re-live an era before the advent of television, video and CDs, a time when entertainment was often impromptu and always spontaneous," she said.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Pearl Beach gradually became home to a few families who were able to make a living from the small farm blocks opened behind the village streets.
By the late 1940s, the Progress Association had begun building a community hall, dedicated in 1950 as a war memorial to the sons of several local families who had died during World War II and in Korea.
To raise funds for the village hall, a number of Pearl Beach residents formed a Glee Club and put on a number of Grand Concerts.
Many of the community had no previous theatrical experience, however, at their first concert in June 1950, they presented a night of musical entertainment which included skits, comedy items, musical renditions and concluded with a number of popular melodies for the audience to join in.
In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in singing for pleasure and recreation and three years ago a handful of local music lovers began work on the concert to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the original Glee Club.
This was followed with another grand concert last year.
Following these successes, Glee Club members have maintained the pleasure of regular meetings around the piano.
Media Release, 18 Jul 2012
Lynne Lillico, Pearl Beach Progress Association
Photo: Alan McKenzie