How does it feel to lose a friend in sudden and tragic circumstances?

It’s shock. Disbelief. Denial.

“No, please tell me it’s not true… it can’t be.”

But it is, and you have no choice but to rapidly come to terms with it.

You have to hear the news from and repeat it to people you love, which twists the knife further.

Your chest is heavy. Your hands, clammy. Your eyes are streams.

Nothing feels right and nothing feels real.

All you can do is lean on, and, in turn, support the community around you. The people whose hearts are aching just as much as yours.

The choir that Jack built.

You keep living, and keep singing.

It can’t bring him back, but it will go a small way to honour his memory.

His gift. His passion. His fire.

The spark that he lit lives on in all of us.

Time passes. People ask, “Is the choir still going?”

“It is,” you reply. It’s not the same, it can never be. It’s something familiar, but new.

We’re figuring it out as we go. Together.

I’ve been in the choir for eight years now. As we learned the songs for this concert, the last that Jack planned for us, I experienced a first. A song made me cry in the process of learning it.

It’s called ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’, by Prince.

We learn songs in chunks and fragments. Repeating and shaping them until they stick.

It wasn’t until that first full run through when we stitched the pieces together that it became clear to me that the song could have been written about Jack.

As you listen to it tonight, think of those who are precious to you.

I’ll be thinking of and singing it for Jack.

I wish we had more time together, my beautiful, special friend.

But how lucky were we to have had the time that we did.

Those kind of cars don’t pass you every day.

21 April 2025

It was our Songs and Stories concert in 2018 when Jack first asked me to arrange some music for the choir. A Prince song, ‘When Doves Cry’. If I’m honest, it wasn’t the best song to arrange for a choir, but we put our own spin on it with a hymn-like opening and our Polyphony flair. It was acapella and we learned it at the last minute. It was joyful and it was fun.

In many ways it seems fitting that ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ is the last song Jack asked me to arrange.

‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ recounts the memories of Christopher Tracey, the character Prince plays in the film Under the Cherry Moon. It expresses the impact of the death of Tracey on the film’s narrator and their desire to join Tracey in the afterlife.

While ‘When Doves Cry’ is sparse and rhythmic, ‘Sometimes It Snows in April' is quiet, introspective, and lyrical. I love the lush, almost jazzy chords of the chorus, which here are sung in close harmony. The cellos and piano recreate the mysterious and meditative opening of the piece, originally sung by Prince, Lisa Coleman, and Wendy Melvoin. 

‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ is a work that ruminates on the themes of mortality, loss, and love, and here, it is an ode to Jack, with Polyphony as its narrator.

Sometimes I wish that life was never ending / And all good things, they say, never last.