Beverley Concert Review by Fan de LoK

Program cover for Beverley concert

Per Fan de LoK the concert was a great success, truly superb! The Minster is a huge, magnificent building but is all one level (no raised platform), so the technical staff did a big job of raising where the boys would stand so they could be seen and also putting up barriers to keep the boys from falling off the platform in the dark. While waiting, the early arrivers got to hear Steven Geraghty play 2-3 songs on the piano. Sam Coates continues as the sound technician with Tom Cully as assistant.

At 3:45 p.m. Fan de LoK and the other fans had to leave the church, and the doors were closed. It was cold and raining outside, so this was his first Libera concert waiting outside in the rain. The only thing that warmed the fans up was to buy big cups of coffee and hot chocolate from a shop down the street.

Libera entered through a side entrance. A small side building was their dressing room. Their rehearsal songs could be faintly heard. At 6:30 p.m. there were only 20 people in line. Most attendees arrived 10 minutes before the concert.

The Minster was full with 250-300 people. About 90 people had premium seats in the front 8 rows. It was very cold inside the church.

The order of songs and soloists were the same as the other UK concerts. After the 5th song, Sanctissima, Matthew J. left the stage to go to Mrs. Geraghty. He seemed to be having trouble with his eye.  Mr. Prizeman played the grand piano with Eternal Light, Ave Verum, Far Away, The Fountain, How Can I Keep From Singing, and When a Knight Won His Spurs. (Note: I really liked it when he played the piano with the songs also!) Kavana's high notes on Far Away were impressively powerful and accurate.

At the intermission, the minister asked that the time be kept short to 15 minutes. There were refreshments, a CD/Poster stand and the church bookstore was open.

For Mysterium, Stefan and Ralph were perched on the balcony of the organ! Ralph's solo in The Fountain was great as always. How Can I Keep From Singing was beautifully interpreted by Sammy, Stefan, Ralph, Daniel and Jakob. Ralph was again very good on When a Knight Won His Spurs. Mini James and Freddie as soloists on Love and Mercy make a really cute pair.

He wonders whether Josh's speech on his voice changing will be his last speech ever. We may not know until Epsom in March. Stefan did a beautiful job on Deep Peace (guess he's doing it all since James T. is not there).  He gave Daniel a "Bravo!" for his interpretation of Stay With Me! Mini James was awesome on Going Home! He's gotten better just since the Bristol concert. Surely one of Libera's major soloists for years to come! How Shall I Sing That Majesty with Stefan and Jakob was beautiful.

There was a standing ovation! Mr. Prizeman made a hand gesture which the string quartet mistook to mean, "Time to play the encore," and they started to play. Oops! Mr. Prizeman stopped them, because people were still applauding loudly. The encore was a shortened 20-30 seconds of Exultate.

Mr. Philipp told some of the fans that Libera's choice of UK cathedrals was partly based on the desire to reach the public in the far corners of England to allow more people to discover their music. Fan de LoK feels it is a very good approach, even for non-English fans like himself. He got to visit areas of England he would have never seen otherwise.  But still no firm word on Libera's plans for the Spring Tour in April.


I don't know about you, but I love to save the playbills and concert programs. These are the other pages of Fan de LoK's Beverley program. It looks a lot like the Atlanta program minus the individual boys' pictures but has the words to the songs and a few new pictures! They sold these for 1BPS! All 31 boys are listed in the program, but not all of them were there.