When City Choir Dunedin member Bill Lloyd (84) dons his evening suit and bow tie to perform Handel's Messiah with the Southern Sinfonia at the Dunedin Town Hall on Tuesday it will be 59 years since he first sang the work with the choir.
He was the longest-serving member in the choir but not the oldest.
''There's a couple older than me.''
Mr Lloyd, of Port Chalmers, migrated from Leicester in the United Kingdom to Wellington in 1954 and moved to Dunedin two years later.
After arriving in Dunedin, he joined the choir and sang tenor in a Messiah performance at the town hall four months later, aged 25.
He was the only remaining member from the 1956 choir.
On Tuesday, he would sing bass among the more than 90 choir members, he said.
Messiah was the ''most magnificent'' work he had sung.
''It's the greatest thing I've ever sung ... The words are good, the music's good, the whole thing is good. You won't find a better performance anywhere.''
The choir had been rehearsing weekly since September but Mr Lloyd knew the work inside out.
''I can sing most of it without looking at the book.''
He intended to continue singing with the choir for many more years.
He met his wife, Evelyn, after being asked to sing with the King Edward Technical College madrigal group in 1957.
The pair married three years later.
Mr Lloyd was Port Chalmers town clerk from 1972 until the town's amalgamation with Dunedin City in 1989.
