Sally celebrates 50 years with Llandrindod Wells choir
Not only did the choir deliver a successful performance of Faure's Requiem, they unearthed scores that allowed them to showcase the choral works of women and Wales, including Rhian Samuel who attended the performance.
Their end of year social was also an opportunity to celebrate the fact that Sally Bramhall has been singing with the choir for 50 years.
Sally started singing with the After Eights choir (named after their poor timekeeping when rehearsing), which then went on to become Cantorion of Llandrindod Wells. Sally was presented with a cake, flowers and gifts to mark her incredible achievement.
The hugely successful performance, accompanied by a string quartet, was made possible thanks to grants received from Ty Cerdd Lottery Grants and the Gwendoline and Margaret Davies Charity.
The choir are now making preparations for their next busy choral season and are welcoming singers who may be interested in joining the group to a free open rehearsal on September 11.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
5 hours ago
- Sky News
The 'stealth shoppers' keeping pricey secrets from their partners - and what it says about their relationships
Hanging in Sally's* cupboard is a £3,000 Dior coat. It is also a secret, and her husband doesn't know about it. "It has yet to make an outing. It will do shortly," she tells Money. "I got the assistant to put it on hold for three months. I saved and bought it without my partner knowing about it. I did not need another coat as I have several." And while he has spotted it in her cupboard - though not on any bank statements because they keep separate accounts - he has never said anything. "It's not going to surprise him, as things do appear, and my wardrobe has investment pieces in it," she says, clarifying that investment usually translates to "expensive". "If he had to guess the value of my wardrobe, he would guess within £10,000 of the value. His guess would be conservative." According to a recent survey, nearly two-thirds of Americans who live with a spouse or significant other have hidden a purchase in the past year - known as "stealth shopping" - and it seems Britons are no different. Brands even sometimes encourage it - the upmarket Fairfax & Favor has an "alibi box" you can tick when you place an order. "We'll include a tongue-in-cheek cunning little note saying your goodies are a competition prize or gift - pick your excuse and they need never know the truth," the brand promises. 'He hoped I wouldn't notice the TV had grown overnight' For Alice*, a woman in her 40s living in Devon, it was her husband who tried to sneak a new television into the house. "He told our daughter he'd bought a new, bigger TV for Christmas and not to tell Mummy," she says, explaining that he waited until she had fallen asleep before getting it out of the car and swapping it with their old one. "He hoped I just wouldn't notice the TV had grown in size overnight." After a discussion, she says she eventually dropped it, instead using it as a bargaining tool to get him to remove their surround sound. "I think it's about choosing your battles," she says. "I wasn't going to win this but I could get something I wanted out of it. "He knew I would never have agreed to the new TV if we'd discussed the purchase." 'When I do spend, I feel a bit guilty' Natalie says she doesn't think her husband would even care, but she still finds herself downplaying her purchases, with one of the latest being tickets to the Strictly Come Dancing live shows. "My boys are obsessed with Strictly and it's one of the few things we all watch together as a family. For the four of us, it was £340, which is the most I've ever spent on tickets for an event," she tells Money. "I know my husband would think it's outrageous, so I told him it was 'reasonable' and he didn't ask the exact price." Natalie downplays purchases, she says, because she doesn't want to justify the cost if she has "consciously researched and thought about what I am buying". In part, she attributes this to her upbringing - she grew up in a working-class family that didn't have much extra money. "My parents always saved for holidays and spent any extra cash on that, so they didn't spend on 'luxuries' or expensive things - even now they love a bargain," she says. "I think that made me quite frugal with money sometimes. So when I do spend on something I consider to be a luxury or an investment, I feel a bit guilty even though I'm not spending more than I can afford." Natalie also struggles with the wage disparity between her and her husband. She runs a small business and also works for a charity, taking home about 25% of the salary her husband, a lawyer, does (they both pool the majority of their money together in a joint account). "I do more of the childcare and household stuff and when my children were younger, I worked part-time to be around more for them," she says. "So we are both contributing in different ways but financially I'll never earn as much as him. Why we do it... 'Money isn't just about numbers' Catherine Morgan, a financial coach, author and wellbeing speaker, says hiding purchases can be a way of avoiding difficult conversations about our financial values. "The relationship we have with money is really a mirror reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves," she says. "Therefore, the need to hide purchases often stems from our deep-rooted emotional relationship with money. "When we hide purchases, we're usually not just concealing the items themselves, but responding to underlying feelings of shame, guilt or fear of judgement. "We worry what people might say, which will often exaggerate these feelings. Money isn't just about numbers - it's deeply intertwined with our identity, values, and a deep sense of security." It can be a "significant issue", she says, as it may signal "deeper challenges" in a relationship. And while the odd pair of shoes may not seem a problem, hiding purchases can be problematic when it starts to affect your emotional wellbeing, with warning signs including anxiety, guilt and consistently hiding purchases and bank statements. Your relationship with money Like all relationships, our one with money can always be "healed and improved", Morgan says. She recommends exploring what triggers your spending habits and what emotions arise when you feel the need to hide purchases. "Often it comes alongside feelings of boredom, stress or even hunger," she says. "Understanding your nervous system's response to money matters is crucial. "When we feel financial shame or anxiety, our body often goes into a stress response - heart racing, shallow breathing or feeling overwhelmed. "Learning to recognise these physical signs can help you pause before making impulsive purchases. "Simple practices like deep breathing or taking a mindful moment before spending can help regulate your nervous system and create space for more conscious financial decisions."
Scotsman
a day ago
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: AI: The Waiting Room – An Audiovisual Journey Couac... Physical Comedy Stampin' in the Graveyard A.I. Campfire
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... THEATRE AI: The Waiting Room – An Audiovisual Journey ★★ C ARTS | C venues | C alto (Venue 40) until 16 August DANCE, PHYSICAL THEATRE AND CIRCUS Couac... Physical Comedy ★★★ Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 24) until 17 August THEATRE Dead Air ★★★★ Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 60) until 24 August THEATRE Stampin' in the Graveyard ★★★ Summerhall (Venue 26) until 25 August THEATRE A.I. Campfire ★★★ Venue 13 (Venue 13) until 23 August Have I written this with AI?— Ask better questions, these shows about the topic seem to reply; ideally ones that aren't part of a narrative driven by AI companies which, as commercial entities, clearly have an incentive to (yes!) replace your job, sell your data and monopolise a marketplace called your life. Couac... Physical Comedy | Mara De Sario AI: The Waiting Room – An Audiovisual Journey begins with entering a lot of personal information into a smart phone app in a piece that seems to be trying to find out what I'd do in a societal meltdown. Not typing all of my plans into a screen, obviously. But if the apocalypse takes as long to arrive as my individually tailored 'script' does to upload, I'll have time to emigrate to Mars – and also escape the chatbot trying to persuade me it's a real person. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Once in the theatre, I, along with the rest of the audience roam around the space in headphones in a piece that has me lugging a virtual version of the 'one item I'd save' (Brompton bicycle) across a swirlingly standard on-screen metaverse refusing to give it up for the collective good, because why would I do that? Eventually, I liaise with my mother at the pre-arranged meeting place, where greets me with 'Sally, my dear heart', something that she would never, ever say. The attempt to fuse AI with live theatre is an interesting idea, but the reality highlights the inaccurate naming of a technology as 'artificial intelligence' when it's clearly the former rather than the latter. 'Dance party?' the show's captions suggest at the end to the largely apathetic audience. This leads to one of the producers swaying in front of a tower of boxes that we built earlier that captures a lonely, haunting emptiness in a way that is insightful but probably not deliberate. The transformation of daily life into a series of technology-enabled tasks is more critically explored in Couac... Physical Comedy, a clown show in which an increasingly worn-down man named Jo, dressed in the rich, dusty colour palette of a more classy era, tries and fails to navigate a city of interconnected apps, surveillance cameras and other AI-based 'assistance' under the flashing lights of state control. It's a precisely performed silent satire, led by experienced circus performer Sébastien Domogalla where – through the ingenious use of a large translucent tulle sheet as a stage-covering screen – animations encase our protagonist in the interface of the digital world. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad From supermarket to home, Joe stumbles, with his shopping, through a city that's constantly out-smarting him, in a rewards-based system of never-ending clicks and empty affirmations ('You're magnificent') for every mundane task completed. With online banking connected to a social credits system, 'friends' reduced to anonymous 'likes' and every interaction accompanied by and advert, it imagines a totally banal dystopia well within reach, should we want it. It feels like some kind of reckoning or resistance must surely be coming. But it doesn't. 'To be continued…' says a caption, and mysteriously ends. The technology seems to have become (a bit) more personalised in comedy-drama-horror Dead Air, a near-futuristic Frankenstein-esque story about an angry young woman called Alfie who, haunted by the 'ghosts' of multiple miscarriages, attempts to resurrect her recently deceased father with the help of an AI enhanced-chatbot company. Writer/performer Alfrun Rose's monologue beautifully blends her protagonist's grief-induced cynicism, a comic cast of family members and the sadness of losing a loved one with the cool, corporate world of AiR, with its subscription 'packages' and endless 'upgrades'. It's cleverly written to capture the ways AI attaches itself to notions that we might relate to, affirms that we are always right, and intersects with real life in a way that can both enhance and destroy it with elaborations that technology companies might describe as 'hallucinations' but in any other industry would be deemed factually incorrect and trigger an Ofcom investigation. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad As the AI generating Alfie's 'father' is 'turned up' or 'turned down', the piece takes on a psychedelic quality that fuses snapshots of the past with wishful thinking, challenging behaviour and QR codes. It's a strange but not unappealing kind of magic – one that, unless Alfie can find thousands of pounds to keep it going, is eventually going to be switched off. Finally, she finds the courage to let go, but it's a testament to Rose's moving writing and performance that's it's such a wrench, for Alfie as well as us. Stampin' In The Graveyard | Valeriia Poholsha In Stampin' in the Graveyard, Elisabeth Gunawan plays Rose, another AI chatbot in human form that, this time, provides 'wisdom and comfort' for those at the end of the world – the place where all of the previous shows feel like they're heading – programmed to make everything feel OK when clearly, it's not. Like Dead Air, it explores an unfulfilled desire to have children, with Rose the digital 'daughter' of a woman ('Mother') and her partner ('Father') whose lives are full of mini metaphorical 'deaths' – of times, connections and events – that form a half-recalled tapestry of a past that, with the audience deciding the 'prompts' (through hand signals), includes a mix of part-truths and fantasies in a jumbled up order that sees every ending lead to another beginning. 'If it doesn't make sense, feel it,' says Rose at the start of this melancholic kaleidoscope of a show, one that, despite being about AI, is firmly embedded in the physical world of a live, interactive performance, with an intriguing miniature model mechanical set, that requires being in a room, together, to experience. Really, it's about human storytelling, albeit a kind that sometimes gets lost in its own dream-like state. A powerful speech from Gunawan breaks the façade at the end and asks what we're looking for in AI that we don't have already, and what we're prepared to protect that it could destroy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A.I Campfire goes back further in time, using modern technology to conjure up the mythical legends of traditional Scottish folklore. It's immersive show in which the ancient world is evoked using a combination of (recorded) human storytelling and multiple AI softwares to create magical-realist imagery, which is projected onto a large screen to envelop the audience. Interestingly, the virtual nature of the digital fire that we all sit around doesn't make the mood any less warm – even though we might be waiting some time for it to toast the marshmallows on sticks that we're holding. The on-screen imagery is at times reminiscent of James Cameron's Avatar, while the stories are based on shapeshifting Selkie tales: one familiar one involving a woman ripped from the sea and held prisoner by a fisherman and another about a murderous male kite surfer stalking the streets of Portobello. Both contain messages being free, caring for the natural world and being vigilant to nefarious forces with ulterior motives who might wish to do us harm. Created by Vanesa Kelly and Ian Garrett, it's a transportive experience to a lovely space that they have collaboratively made – one that feels like part of a bigger ongoing project. We all have a chat about it at the end, like people have been doing for thousands of years, sitting on the floor and talking in a circle.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Coronation Street fans 'only just realising' Sally Carman is married to soap co-star
Coronation Street star Sally Carman, who plays Abi Webster, appeared on ITV's This Morning Coronation Street enthusiasts were treated to a lovely double treat during Wednesday's This Morning. Throughout the latest episode, Sally Carman, who portrays Abi Webster, graced the iconic sofa to discuss her character's dramatic plot developments. Abi, who is wed to Kevin Webster, has lately been conducting an affair with his sibling Carl Webster. In teasers for the coming week, the pair discover their clandestine relationship revealed by none other than Tracy Barlow. In forthcoming episodes, Carl draws Abi into an embrace which quickly becomes a fervent kiss whilst they're alone at number 13, reports Leicestershire Live. Nevertheless, Tracy is covertly observing them through the kitchen window, sporting a cunning grin... Making an appearance on Wednesday's This Morning to discuss the plot, Sally, 50, momentarily interrupted her chat to highlight her real-life spouse, Joe Duttine, beaming proudly from the side of the studio as the camera shifted to capture the Coronation Street performer. Sally remarked: "My husband's just there, hi babe!" as the camera moved to show him waving in return. Joe, 55, portrays Tim Metcalfe on the cobbles and wed his co-star Sally in 2022, with the couple frequently posting affectionate photographs on Instagram. Posting on Twitter, now X, one viewer commented: "Married to Tim in real life #thismorning" whilst another fan replied: "Never knew that! ! !" and a separate admirer noted: "yes not many people do to be fair, they got married few years back!" Discussing her current storyline on Wednesday's This Morning, and whether her character Abi's feelings for Carl are genuine or just self-sabotage, Sally revealed: "I think she thinks they're genuine. "I think there's a real need and desire for her to have that perfect love. I mean, there's no such thing, but you know that sort of because he's promised her a family unit. He said he'll take Alfie on and he loves her and will support her and create this home. She wants to believe him." In the same interview, Sally confessed that she's been on the receiving end of some soap fans' anger over her latest plotline. She quipped: "Oh you cannot mess with Kevin Webster! I've been handbagged in the street, yeah!". This comes after Sally recently posted some romantic pictures with Joe during their trip to Rome, Italy. She captioned them: "Rome antics #roma #fithusband #pasta #weekendaway #limone #badleg." Reacting to the post, one fan commented: "Lovely photos of you both hope you are having a lovely time", another user wrote: "Gorgeous couple" while another chimed in: "Lovely photos of a stunning couple xxx." Coronation Street continues on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8pm on ITV and ITV X.
