Egypt tour 2024
Alexandria & Cairo, 31st March ~ 7th April
We met late on Saturday evening in the magical and mysterious setting of Anafora, a retreat in the desert between Cairo and Alexandria. This becomes our joyful and restorative home for the next few days as we acclimatise to the heat.
From here we visited Alexandria, singing in the marvellous Teatro Eskendria on Sunday night.
On Monday we visited the fascinating monasteries of Wadi Natrun, built in honour of the early hermit saints known as the Desert Fathers who lived and worshipped in the area in the third century AD. We were delighted to be given a warm welcome at three different monasteries, and were even allowed to sing - an unexpected treat given that we were visiting during Coptic Lent.
On our return we took part in the deeply moving Evening Prayer service in the chapel at Anafora. We picked out the odd word from the liturgy, but this Coptic service was startlingly different from what we are used to.
The following day we bade a sad farewell to the sisters who had looked after us so well in Anafora, having first visited their larger church, which they were in the process of painting, and made our way to our new home, in the compound of All Saints' Cathedral in Cairo.
The following day, after exploring the mosques and souqs of Islamic Cairo, we joined forces with the Cairo Choral Society for a rehearsal in the American University in Cairo under the baton of their conductor, John Baboukis. John was the true lynchpin of our tour - he immediately understood the nature of our group and facilitated the bulk of the Cairo leg of our tour by generously arranging a joint concert in the Ewart Hall of the American University involving his colleague Dr Wael El Mahallawy on qanun and other colleagues, and also arranging for us to record in the university's high quality recording studios in their New Cairo campus.
It was a real pleasure to join forces with the Cairo Choral Society in the concert the following day. It was a memorable performance, with sets from each choir separately, joint performances of Lamaa Badaa and El Helwa-Di accompanied by Dr Wael culminating in tutti performances of Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and the Kyrie and Gloria from Schubert’s Mass in G.
The next day we had a 3-hour recording session in the American University's recording studios, expertly directed by David Rafferty. We owe many thanks to David, as well as the students and members of faculty who took part, including Dr Wael, John Baboukis on qanun and a talented riqq player (a kind of tambourine). We were also very grateful to Nouran Khalil, a singer from Cairo Choral Society, who sang the verses of the monophonic version of Lamaa Badaa as well as giving us expert tips on pronunciation! You can hear the results on our soundclips page.
The following day we had our chance to visit the pyramids, where we enjoyed lunch as a group within the complex at Khufu's restaurant.
We finished off the tour with a morning Eucharist service at All Saints' Cathedral, at which we sang the Schubert Mass in G along with the Vivaldi Gloria jointly with the church choir and bade a fond farewell to our kind hosts there, Revd AJ Gunther and his wife MaryBeth.
You can see full details on our blog.
Performances
Sunday 31st March - Singing in Teatro Eskendria, Alexandria
Monday 1st April - Singing in monasteries near Anafora
Monday 1st April - Evening prayer in Anafora
Thursday 4th April - Concert with Cairo Choral Society and Arabic instrumentalists - 9pm
Friday 5th April - Recording with students from American University, Cairo
Sunday 7th April - 11am Service in All Saints' Cathedral, Cairo
We were all deeply saddened to learn of the sudden death of John Baboukis, a few short months after our tour. He had only recently retired back to his native United States after many years in Egypt. We would like to express our condolences as a choir to his family and friends, and to reiterate our heartfelt gratitude for the great friendship that he showed us, and the music that he shared with us on our visit to Cairo.
