We all had a jolly good skive last week. Ollie was ill. I was ill (though admittedly on Thursday not Wednesday). Kay had a funny throat (probably all the dust with moving house). And I don't know who else was ill, but I don't think many people turned up in spite of John's very kind offer to supply us with wine and revelry in the director's absence.
Everyone was better this evening. Oh, much better, judging how focused and jolly we were rehearsing our Cloudburst
Watch out for our new Bass's extraordinary finger clicking talents in this piece! Luke can do all four fingers very loud and fast which not only gives a kind of washboard impression, but would have Eric Whitacre reeling and drooling that it's EXACTLY what he requires for rainy sound effects. This led to a demonstration of weird talents. Arno, for instance, is able to flap his fingers against the palms of his hands which produces a kind of clapping noise (causing Sebastian to ask if that was in fact the sound of one hand clapping); it looked as if he was playing invisible castanets very manically. No one was interested in me being able to wiggle my big toes, choosing to focus on other, more womanly, assets. I can only take it as a compliment... thanks, Elaine, for drawing attention in that direction!
Concentrating solely on Cloudburst, we were rather impressed with Luke's and Natalie's (our new Alto - just for the extra confusion of two Natalies in the Alto section) sight reading and their ability to keep up with what was going on.
Luke, the main feature in this blog it seems(!), gets second prize for comment of the evening: when Ollie mentioned we will be singing the Hebrew Love Songs, Luke boldly asked "Er, what did you say I haven't sung yet?" It gave Robin hysterics. He was rather giggly anyway after Ollie's priceless request that he wanted to, "... hear a noise coming out from the bottom section". He might have been feeling very happy anyway, due to the fact he passed his driving theory test today!
John tried to hand over his narrations in Cloudburst to Anna-Lauren saying she speaks better Spanish. Which is probably true, but as Anna-Lauren says he has a way of putting it across. We decided to attempt stereo. John will do the first narrated bit, and A-L the second one.
So, we all go home with sore thighs from all the slapping. Don't get excited, it's very boring really. Even though Helen promised she'd slap me... I'm sure Eric wasn't thinking of anything except how to emulate the sound of rain when he wrote the instruction to slap the thighs. I await an email link from Arno who, typically, seemed to have a theory about where slapping yourself hurts least or makes the most noise... will report back if any experiments get to rehearsal.
I'm off to bed now. But first I will indulge in a cream cracker and a glass of milk, and finish a bit of knitting. Singing makes me hungry. I'm not going to eat the knitting.
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