For the uninitiated, the Phil Lang Award was founded in memory of a longstanding OH member who died of prostate cancer in 2012. It’s awarded annually to the chorus member deemed by his peers to have made the most notable contribution to the chorus over the past year and in 2020 it went to Chorus Manager, Jeff Lemon.

2020 has been a pretty awful year by anyone’s assessment and Oxford Harmony stopped live rehearsals at the beginning of the first Covid-19 lockdown in the middle of March. We spent Spring and Summer sustained by Jeff’s weekly missives containing a mixture of Zoom rehearsal content and quiz questions. The latter served either to exercise the mind or frustrate, depending on your propensity for lateral thinking. The award was presented by last year’s winner (Robert Cowan) in Covid-secure conditions, vaguely reminiscent of a spy exchange at Checkpoint Charlie but 625 miles West and with fewer firearms. Jeff is the warm one on the right.

Oxford Harmony returned to physical rehearsals at the beginning of October 2020 in a well ventilated hall (a.k.a. freezing cold), 2m distant at all times and wearing masks throughout. If that isn’t dedication to close harmony singing I don’t know what is! The new variant of Covid-19 took hold during December and live rehearsals stopped again. We’re now back on Zoom, puzzling over Jeff’s quiz questions and keeping everything crossed that the vaccination programme will get us back to business as usual by Spring. Watch this space…