Award-winning choir Only Men Aloud, and the latest Welsh male voice choir to be created – their protégées Only Boys Aloud – boarded a train bound for Ebbw Vale to entertain passengers with an impromptu on-board concert this morning (Monday, July 26).
Three members of Only Men Aloud, their music director Tim Rhys-Evans, and three Only Boys Aloud members from Ebbw Vale – Joe, Aaron and Martin – sang some of the songs they’ll be unveiling at the National Eisteddfod’s opening concert on Friday, July 30.
Passengers on the Arriva Trains Wales trip were blown away by new arrangements of Sospan Fach and Calon Lan, sung in both of the train’s carriages. Mrs Sheila Loud, of Swffryd, Crumlin, said it had been “a lovely surprise”.
The choir members, who entertained passengers in the concourse of Cardiff Central station before boarding the Ebbw Vale train, were launching the start of a new BBC Cymru Wales TV series, Only Boys Aloud, which follows the journey of how the guys from the main choir spent three months finding, training, and shaping a group of disparate boys from the valleys, many of whom may never have sung before, into a professional-sounding choir.
Only Boys Aloud starts on BBC Two Wales on Tuesday, July 27, at 10pm and continues on Wednesday and Thursday.
See if the boys manage to pull off the biggest night of their lives as they sing for the first time in front of 4,000 people in Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru: Only Men Aloud – Adre’n Ôl, a BBC Cymru Wales production for S4C on Friday, July 30, 8pm. The concert is also on BBC Radio Wales on Sunday, August 1, in Only Men Aloud Homecoming – The Eisteddfod Opening Concert 2010 at 8pm.
