From Ave Maria to Li'l Lisa Jane - New Zealand's national male choir is bringing its deep and ringing voices to Wanganui for a concert on Sunday.
For Wanganui member Dick Mitchell the concert will be just another high point in decades of enjoyable singing.
It takes place in the Prince Edward Auditorium at Wanganui Collegiate School, with door sales and a start time of 1.30pm.
The choir sings a wide range of music, and this concert is titled Home and Abroad. Likely to be on the list are parts of Christchurch composer Philip Norman's A New Sky song cycle, Ave Maria, the Irish folk song Carrickfergus and the show tune With a Little Bit of Luck. In the repertoire will be songs the choir will sing at the Cultural Olympiad before the London Olympic Games.
The guest artist on Sunday will be well-known Wanganui flautist Ingrid Culliford and among the singers will be Dick Mitchell, who has sung since his days at a Christchurch secondary school.
"We had a music teacher there who thought that all young men could and would sing, regardless of what their voice was like. She engendered lots of enthusiasm," he said.
Mr Mitchell has a bass voice and has been a member the New Zealand Male Choir since 2004. Since then he's been overseas with it at least five times, and sung Catholic masses in great European cathedrals such as Notre Dame in Paris.
"It was magnificent. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck."
Music is a universal language, he said, and even for a person with no religious background religious music is some of the most stirring.
His and that of fellow Wanganui national male chorister Gordon Keelty will be among the 1000 male voices at the Cultural Olympiad in London on July 7. They will be among 200 singers from Australasia, performing three songs from the region then six more with the massed voices of 1000 men from five continents, to an audience of thousands.
"It's going to be absolutely magic," said Mr Mitchell.
He plans to combine the concert with two months' tramping in England, including Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk across the north.
He said national male choir members had to fund their own travel and expenses. There were monthly weekend-long practices for North Island men at Cambridge, and CDs to record, as well as trips overseas and concerts around New Zealand.
It could be expensive, but Mr Mitchell said the choir was a fine organisation. "It's like a great big family."
Other Wanganui members are Mr Keelty, Gerard Willemsen and Bryan Barrett, with two more Wanganui men auditioning this weekend.
One of the choir's two accompanists is Judy Barrett, who is the head of music at Nga Tawa Diocesan School in Marton. She's also the musical director of Wanganui Male Choir, which has more than 100 years of history and gives two public concerts in Wanganui each year, as well as entertaining at rest homes and doing occasional tours.
It rehearses each week at the Sacred Heart Chapel at Jane Winstone Retirement Village.