Dust Choir

The hall lost its roof in the explosion. The choir lost its conductor. What is left is nine retired singers who still turn up every Thursday with folding chairs and thermoses of coffee, and sing into the dust.

A young sound engineer offers to record them. It is not much of an offer, technically: one microphone, a laptop, no budget, and an acoustic that is now more sky than ceiling. The choir accepts and decides that if they are being recorded, there may as well be a concert.

Rehearsals bring back the repertoire, and with it every rivalry the choir has been carrying since the seventies. The question that takes longest to answer is not whether they can still sing. It is who, in a city that keeps rebuilding itself, they are singing for.