Hold My Beer isn’t just the callout by Canadian musician Aaron Pritchett while he kisses your girlfriend.
It’s not even the callout traditionally known to be the warning to friends when you’re about to do something stupid.
It’s the siren song of Prince George choir Nove Voce’s latest fundraiser for a lot of fun involving a variety of songs about friends and parties and even one locally created song about beer alongside an opportunity to taste test flights of beer crafted by local microbreweries.
The special event is held at Knox Performance Centre in downtown Prince George where a ticket gets you a seat at a shared table including three rounds of craft beer from Trench Brewing, CrossRoads Brewing and Deadfall Brewing.
“This will be an intimate concert with space for about 100 and everybody will get samples of nine different beers for three local brewing companies,” Robin Norman, choir director of Nove Voce, said. “And we’ve got some door prizes from Pacific Western Brewing and then we’ve got fun, silly songs in between tastings to cleanse your palette.”
Nove Voce choir member Kathy Pereira even went as far as to write a beer madrigal.
“She wrote a song all about beer for us,” Norman said. “It’s fun because we picked some silly songs and we got some really great drinking songs from the Irish Rovers and The Proclaimers and other Irish folk songs and all of it is interspersed with some beer trivia and beer tasting and that is essentially the night.”
There will be table snacks to munch on as well.
“I am so impressed how our local independent breweries continually win awards,” Norman said.
“I’ve followed Deadfall Brewery for a while now and then came across a person who had never heard of them before so if you’re a person who wants to get passed their regular this is a really good chance for you to see what Prince George breweries are doing and what they have to offer because it’s quite spectacular right now.”
This is the opportunity to have a flight tasting of local beers to see what these three breweries are offering, Norman added.
Nove Voce is a multi-award winning 22-member choir that has achieved international acclaim.
Because of that, they have been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York next summer during an event featuring all-Canadian women’s choirs showcasing all-Canadian women-created music.
“So Hold My Beer is our fundraiser to help get us there,” Norman explained.
This isn’t a competition but rather a presentation where Kelly Walsh from the Maritimes was invited to conduct the program. She invited choirs from across Canada to participate in the showcase, and Nove Voce was included in that invitation, Norman said.
“We said yes and so we’re going to go to New York from June 26 to 29 and sing at Carnegie Hall and do the thing,” Norman said.
“At Hold My Beer we’ll actually be doing a piece that was written for us by Canadian composer Tracy Wong, which is a mash up of Alanis Morissette songs All I Really Want and You Oughta Know and Tracy arranged that for us and she’ll be one of the composers represented in New York with a piece we’ve done several times here called Singkap Siaga. So come have fun with some great music and discover new beer from local breweries."
Hold My Beer goes Saturday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. at Knox Performance Centre, 1448 Fifth Ave. The event is limited to 19+ and only 100 tickets are available.
Tickets are $50 each at www.eventbrite.ca/e/hold-my-beer-tickets.
