by The City Academy Voices choir had just ended the Supremes hit, I will make you love myself when the lights went out and accompanied by an unexpected guest.
When they wanted to perform their last song, a man appeared on stage a blue dressing dress without shoes. He took the microphone, described her vocals as a “terrible racket” and asked them to get out and let the 360 ODD people shock and seeped away in the room.
“You are in my house, you can leave it now,” he said. The man, it seems, was Jonathan Baker, the Bishop of Fulham. In a video published on social media, the bishop shows the choir that it is after 10 p.m. and demands that the night is “over”.
“It was so bizarre,” said Leigh Stanford Thompson, the choir director, and described the incident that took place on Friday evening. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
By chance it was also his last concert that led the choir, and the night was “designed as a celebration”.
“Many people found it a strange thing that I organized like a farewell matter, but I knew exactly what was happening,” he said.
This was the first thinking of a choir member. She said: “At first I thought it was a comedy act or an actor who makes a scene. But when we realized, oh no, that’s not an act, that’s real, it was just a bit surreal.”
The choir approached at the end of its special summer concert on Friday, this time in St. Andrew Church in Holborn, London. The choir had booked the event location that is available for setting and used it before without output.
The choir member described the sequence of the events and said: “We sang away. This was our penultimate song. Then we wanted to make one last number and get everyone out of the corridors and dance.
“Then the lights suddenly went out. At first I thought there might have a power failure. But then the instruments still played.
“We resumed to sing again when everything suddenly became quiet. I could see this guy in a dressing dress that spoke to the audience on the microphone.”
After Baker’s interruption on the stage, a church employee took the microphone and apologized to everyone who would have to go because “this is a dorm”.
“I have to ask you to go quietly, thank you for your number of visitors,” said the church worker before talking to the choir. “Would you leave the stage,” she said.
The choir member said: “There was boos and everything, it is just very disappointing. At the end of these concerts we always end at a real high and everyone goes full of joy, but these stamped things.”
Baker’s comments on the “racket”, which was produced, did not fit well. “I think we produce a nice sound,” said the choir member.
“If he had only waited five minutes, we would have finished and ended, but because of what happened, there was a lot of booze. Then people applauded the choir.”
The last song would be a fully staged representation of Abba’s dance queen. As an outrage, the choir started an A -cappella version on stage and ended them on the way to a loud, delightful reception. “Everyone clapped when we made our way,” she said.
“All of this took much longer than if he only ended the concert at the right time.”
Thompson said the spontaneous end was “very beautiful and quite moving”.
“We all went into the pub afterwards and took everything. Everyone was really amazed.
“I think it’s funny. I am not particularly upset. We had a really good concert, but I think it’s a real shame that we had no chance to end.
A spokeswoman for the Diocese of London said: “Bishop Jonathan turned to the organizers on Saturday to apologize for his late -evening appearance at the concert, which he now understood because he had overrun due to previous technical difficulties.”
