2025 hit the ground running. We started by refreshing our memory about all good things from the coaching weekend in November with Mieneke Klinkert and then we headed straight into another wonderful coaching weekend, this time with musicality judge and coach Emma Shanks. Once again, our heads were full of new revelations about the techniques of singing and performing. After having practiced these for a month, it was time for another coaching weekend. This time singing coach Stuart Sides was back with many good tips on chord structures, breath discipline, vowel pronunciation and much more…. 

Every time a coach works with  us, we realize that the more we learn, the more we know that we don’t know…. But one of the fantastic things with the members of Bella Acapella is that everyone is eager to learn and to develop as singers and always anxious to try out new things. 

We are lucky to have members in the chorus who are teachers. One of them arranged for us to practice in her school’s assembly hall. It’s a big room where our risers fit and the acoustics resemble the one at the Helsingborg Arena, which is huge! So it’s been a really good place to practice.
 

In addition, as a break from the competition preparations, we had a performance at one of the other teacher’s school.

It was an inspiring morning where we had several sessions with over 200 pupils, from 4 until 12 years old. We had a warming up together, sang Do Re Mi and practiced our competition set. Let's hope we have planted some musical seeds in these young hearts.
 

We will have a pre-dress rehearsal performance on Good Friday (18 April) at the Charette restaurant in Cabanas de Tavira at 12.45 pm.
The official dress rehearsal concert to show you all our competition program will be in April at Moncarapacho on 26 at 5 pm. You are all very welcome. Tickets are free so you can just show up and enjoy!

 

After this, we will be as prepared as we can be and on 30 April we fly to Sweden! Thanks to your contributions through “go fund me” and our calendar and other means, all members’ competition fees are covered by the funding! A huge THANK YOU for your support. 

On Thursday 1 May we will have a short practice and on Friday 2 May at 16.17 (Portuguese time) we will be on stage, singing our competition songs like never before!! You are invited to follow us live by signing up to a webcast via this link: SNOBS. Full day Entrance to all choruses for € 14


 

Music is the food of the soul, singing in a chorus deeply unites us with others, creates new and solid bonds because it takes us on a journey where each uniqueness mixes with the others to create the harmony of major and subtle chords. 

In 2024 we´ve had several concerts in Tavira, São Bras de Alportel, an open air concert in Bordeira and of course the competition in Calpe (Spain). Therefore, it felt good to finally have a full concert at our homebase, the charming and comfortable Republica14 Cultural Centre in Olhão. With a sold out concert, chairs in the isles and people standing, it felt like a warm welcome and a true homecoming.

Our next goal is the European competition in Sweden in May 2025. It is the gold medal won in Spain in April 2024 that propels us to Sweden, it is stressful, magical and stimulating. All our efforts will be concentrated towards this objective, several weekends of coaching, hours of rehearsal, stage preparations, changes in our costumes, in short... an adventure…In November we enjoyed an amazing coaching under the spell of Mieneke Klinkert, musical director of The Skyline Sisters Dutch Barbershop chorus. It was intense, hard work, learning, feeling, getting out of our comfort zone and much more… Our president Kersti handed our chimney as a thank you to Mieneke.

Other coachings are planned as well as dress rehearsal concerts in Spring 2025. We will let you know when and where.
To get our ship to the shores of Helsingborg, we have created a fundraising campaign, here is the link: https://gofund.me/1a9a487c  Of course you can still donate and be part of our journey! Thank you for supporting us...

But for now the holiday mood is starting to set in. We still have three rehearsals before Christmas and a well deserved break until the middle of January.
We wish all our friends and followers a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We are looking forward to keeping you updated regarding our activities during 2025.

Summer is slowly fading away and here we are, back to rehearsals!
And already on the first night back we had two new leads completing their audition process. Welcome as full members, Ana and Finn!!
After a semester full of coachings, concerts, competition and a gold medal in Spain, we are back in our starting blocks to deliver three concerts, learn new songs and integrate our new members. A lot of work and a lot of laughs.

Sweden 2025
All our efforts will be focused on our competition songs for next year, since thanks to our 2024 gold medal in Spain, we are qualified to go and compete at the European Barbershop Convention in Helsingborg, Sweden in May 2025. Coachings to come, hours of work and rehearse and well, let’s try to make our dream come true! This competition comes with quite a high cost for travel, accommodation etc. For this reason we have started a “Go-fund-me”. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bella-acapella and we will appreciate every contribution. In our next newsletter we will inform you of our progress to achieve our goal.

Please, check out our new website!
It’s still the same address www.bellaacapella.pt but otherwise new. Amongst other features there is a possibility to sign up for our new way of keeping you all informed about our activities - a Newsletter, which will be sent out 3 - 4 times per year. Since you are already a dear friend of Bella Acapella you have already been added to our Newsletter mailing list. We hope that you will like the website and our newsletter and that you will recommend it to your friends. 

Our concerts to come : 

• Street concert at the Bordeira Com Vida Festival, Saturday 14th of September @ 18h00
• Tavira, Música nas Igrejas, Igreja do Carmo, Saturday 5th of October @ 18h00
• Olhão, Re-Criativa, Sunday 27th of October @ 16h00, reservation via reservas@republica14.pt