The concert lowdown

Evening all, well I am safely tucked up in my sweats with a Diet Coke and some proggy Genesis for company to give you the lowdown on tonight's concert.

Well, what can I say? What a great experience! Tonight was one of the best concerts I have ever had the pleasure to be involved with. Everyone was on fire. Maestro Boy led us with more than his usual brilliance and we even watched him on occasions and (cor blimey!) once or twice followed his lead! So the concert contained a bit of jolly Tormis (Anne is her introduction to Lulling said that we had all come to love Tormis... I think some might beg to differ!), some of our old friends Lauridsen and Betinis (Envoi was the usual stressful, clinging-on experience for the Sop2s but I think we nailed it. Kind of), a bit of clashy Part, a touch of Vaughan Williams, Jede Sedlak (minus folders!), some French fun (Mirren, you'll be pleased to know that our pronunciation was largely excellent comprehensible not terrible), Hide and Seek, Green Fir Forest (which, much to our collective surprise came off quite well) and a great big helping of Eric Whitacre.

In fact we did two of our Whitacre numbers this evening. We took another crack at Five Hebrew Love Songs which was wonderful (we even got a clap after the second movement!). I think I can say that we universally love this piece of music; cheers to Aaron for playing violin for us again. Then of course came the piece de resistance Cloudburst!. Now, anyone who has been following this blog since the start (it's been a year now, folks!) will know that this piece has had a seriously long gestation period. But man, tonight it all came together. We were joined by some great percussionists, a marvellous pianist, the fabulous Holy Trinity Handbell group from Haddington and, you will be pleased to hear if you have followed our percussion saga over the past few weeks, an intact bass drum and a very large piece of wobbling metal than sounded nothing like dear ol' Rolf. When we got to the climax of the storm it really felt like the roof of the Reid Hall might just lift right off its foundations. An incredible, joyful night. Thanks to all the musicians who made it happen. We couldn't have done it without you - or at least the stormy bits would have sounded decidedly less, erm, stormy.

My introduction highlight of the night was definitely from Monsieur Wexler who always does a funny intro (although not always purposefully so). Tonight's was no exception as he introduced The Spring Time of the Year by saying that Vaughan Williams liked the tune of this one but found the lyrics a bit dull... all 8 or so verses! So VW restricted himself to two verses of the, and I quote, "... fairly predictable nautical romance". Ah, John sure has a way of putting things.

So hopefully we raised a pretty packet for the kids of the Balkans to learn about friendship and fun through the medium of music [Around £1,000 it would seem]. Here's also hoping that Editor King will have some piccies for us over the coming days [Oh, okay then] (and perhaps even a wee video [you'll have to wait until we sync it up to the good quality audio; if you're really keen to hear it then have a browse on YouTube]) so keep checking back to Relative Pitch for that.

I'm off to make a cup of tea and bask in the joy that was Rudsambee and friends at Reid Hall. Thanks if you came and supported us tonight - the audience were very encouraging and we even received a box of Millionaire's shortbread from two of our biggest fans. Trust me, you know you've made it when you start receiving gifts from your groupies - especially eatables!

See you Wednesday

CSW