IT WAS QUITE A DAY

Our most interesting day in London was Sunday, September 16. Being the Sabbath, we began by taking the tube to Covent Garden to attend worship at The Crown Court Church of Scotland.

We were received warmly by the congregation and loved the worship. Not a large church, but spirited in their singing - five hymns at full throat! And a terrific sermon.

Afterwards we went downstairs to the coffee hour and were invited for lunch, but this we declined as we had important errands to run. We were off to the local theater box offices to see what might be available for later in the week. We walked to the Lyric Theater and purchased tickets for Thriller Live. Then we went to the Cambridge Theater and were lucky to snag a couple of tickets to the hottest show in town - Matilda the Musical. We'll tell you about these in later posts.

Lee had always dreamed of going to the Royal Albert Hall, certainly the most famous music venue in England (perhaps in the world) and it happened that the RAH was very near our apartment. Here is the exquisite exterior and interior. The first is a stock photo, the second we took from our seats.

We checked the schedule to see "What's On?" and found one intriguing choice - The Sunflower Jam Superjam, a fundraiser to help therapists and spiritual healers to work on cancer wards in the British National Health Service, especially with children. Every year the Sunflower Jam brings together famous artists to contribute to this great cause. 

This year's concert was emceed by Jeremy Irons and included musicians from the classic British rock groups Queen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden. 

Also, there were representatives from British musical theater. Notable among these was Alfie Boe, renowned for his role as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater and voted this year Britain's favorite male vocalist.

This made for quite an eclectic and interesting evening. Here's a link to the playlist if you'd like to check it out. 

http://www.queenonline.com/en/news-archive/brians-sunflower-jams/

And if you're really intrigued just Google "Sunflower Jam 2012" and watch the many You Tube videos from the concert. Pretty amazing.

This choir of cancer survivors appeared and brought everyone to tears with their courage and unconquerable spirit.

Special guest for the evening was the one and only Alice Cooper. This thrilled Deb enormously as he's from her hometown of Detroit and, apparently, despite his well-cultured reputation, a very nice guy. Among his song choices for the evening was "Elected" in honor of the upcoming November election. It brought the house down. In fact, the house "came down" throughout the evening as song after song was played and in growing crescendo whipped the faithful into a continual frenzy. Yes, even we staid Presbyterians.

Maybe these photos we took will give some sense of it all.

It was a wonderful evening and we're so glad we took the chance to buy tickets without really knowing what we were getting into.

Here's the serendipity. Upon returning home and going through our mail we discovered that Alfie Boe will be appearing in Pittsburgh on October 30 at the Byham. We immediately bought our tickets.

We're fairly certain he won't be singing Led Zeppelin as he did at the Sunflower Jam. More likely we'll hear "Bring Him Home" from Les Mis and "O Sole Mio," as he sang for the Queen's recent Diamond Jubilee Concert. Whatever, it'll be great.

All in all, it was quite the day. Thanks for staying tuned.

:-)