Reporter Lindsey Smith has told readers how she rediscovered the joys of singing with a renowned symphony orchestra.

Lindsey, from the Tamworth Herald, was one of 1,200 people who went to a sing-along with the City of Birmingham Symphonic Orchestra to rehearse and perform Brahms' German Requiem in only four hours.

She said: "It was absolutely brilliant. I was quite nervous before the performance since I still didn't really know the piece, and had to sight-sing a lot of it."

Lindsey is no stranger to 'sight-singing' as she used to be part of the hard-working CBSO Chorus.

She said: "We were expected to have a reasonable stab at unseen pieces from the first rehearsal because there simply wasn't time to note-bash for every individual voice part.

"While it's not recommended, I once performed, from memory, Mahler's Symphony No8 - a massive and beautiful choral work - picking up a score just four days before the first performance."

And according to Lindsey, the music chosen for the sing-along was no pushover either.

"It is 65 minutes of complex, beautiful music, ranging from the merely challenging to the downright daunting, with a couple of complete impossibles thrown in," she said.

She definitely seems to have been smitten by Brahms' charms, and is keen to try and fit the CBSO Chorus back into her schedule.

She said: "I thought I would love to join the chorus again - I even picked up one of the leaflets to audition. But I'll have to see if I can fit it in with work and everything."

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