My first task is to apologise for my absence and for leaving you to Jen’s tender mercies – though, I must say, she made a great job of the Wigtown blog and, as I was in no fit state to sit in the cold and damp tip-tap-typing at my computer, I am hugely grateful to her for taking over.
Chris informed me last night that he thinks I should write the blog whether or not I’m at the rehearsal I’m supposed to be writing about. Apparently Claire(1) fulfilled her weekly duties as Blogstress no matter what. Well, somehow I doubt you’d want to hear about my bout of cellulitis (no, not cellulite, though I’m sure I have that as well – on a more permanent basis, too!), my soaring temperature, blotchy, swollen arm and quite disgustingly debilitating antibiotics – and all because of the smallest splinter imaginable; or about my most recent trip to Munich where I went even though I should really have stayed at home getting better (having said that, I could write several blog entries about the joys (not) of the Oktober Fest/Beer Festival and the endless amusement to be had from looking at people who really shouldn’t be in their lederhosen and dirndls - but maybe I should leave that to another time and place) so, if you don’t mind, I shall stick to my habit of only – oh lordy, the terminology has escaped me for the moment, Olde Ludditey stick that I am – POSTING (“is that right?” she quavers) a blog when I have something to say about the choir. And of course, as you know, sometimes not even then.
So...
We’ve been recruiting – or trying to. All very exciting. I have to claim credit as it was my idea to hold an open rehearsal, to invite along anyone interested in singing with a choir and to see if we could inveigle a few of them into auditioning for us. Last night we held said rehearsal, open-doored and open-armed, in the spacious upstairs hall at Priestfield church. I think we’d had about 4 notes of interest but in the end there were 11 eager new faces, 10 women and 1 solitary, brave, Greek man (potential bass). More sopranos than anything else, as usual, but as we are in need of one or two of those this was no bad thing. One of them was particularly good. We require a replacement Helen to sing the squeaky bits along with Anna Lauren and this young lady (name forgotten in spite of the silly name-game I made everyone play before we started) held a very high, very long note all on her lonesome (or so it seemed) when we had a go at singing the glorious‘Sleep. Lovely (both the song and the long, high note). So, we have to have her and she may get no choice in the matter – Rudsambee would sink to kidnap and coercion, I’m sure, if it became necessary. We began with 3 women singing alto but soon lost one of them to the tenors (2nd tenor, too – Jenny was most put out, even quite sulky. “That’s my job” she said sotto voce, bottom lip protruding alarmingly). I don’t know if Jess (?) was a likely candidate but she was the only potential tenor and the poor lads are in need of support, there being only 3 of them now. Plus the disgruntled one on occasion, when unavoidable.
I managed to be late though I’ve no idea how. I think my kitchen clock must be slow as I left in plenty of time, heeding the Boy Wonder’s instructions to be there ready to start at 7.30 - and I’m not a dawdler, that I can assure you. As I had agreed to do the silly, physical part of the warm-up my tardiness was a tad embarrassing. Ollie even had to phone me to check I was coming and it was only then when I looked at my phone that realised I was running behind – only by about 5 minutes but still - I had planned to be early. Oops! Anyway, people were still gathering when, eventually, I did arrive so it wasn’t the end of the world by any means. I duly took everyone through some daftness and then made an idiot of myself by forgetting half the words to a nonsense song which, therefore, only lasted half as long as it should have and made even less sense than usual, but – heigh-ho! perhaps it didn’t matter and my squealing and swearing in despair gave them all something to laugh at – which is nice.
Ollie did the sensible bit of the vocal warm-up and then added a bit when Luke turned up just as we were finishing. Poor lad missed all the fun..
Then we sang. Started with Desh – think I’m getting the hang of the fast bits now, although there are some ‘words’ it’s very hard to get the tongue around. Quite what our recruits made of it I don’t know but it’s great fun and very unusual so hopefully they were impressed by our originality. Certainly they seemed to be making quite a good job of it – unless, of course, they were only pretending to join in. I’m sure I might (would) have been tempted to such subterfuge had I been in their position.
Next we had a look at Sleep, which we haven’t sung for ages but which I remembered almost perfectly. Was able to dispense with the music an’ all! I have to say it was sounding gorgeous – especially when the men (sorry, Jess) were singing bits by themselves. Yum. I do hope we’ll get to perform it again soon because it is a joy to sing – and also, I imagine, to listen to.
Working on these two pieces took us all the way through to 9.30. I think Ollie had planned to sing a couple of other things but decided that doing less and actually hearing the results of some concentrated practice would be more satisfying in the end. I’m sure he was right. The choir performed Bogoroditse Djevo and Une Puce to illustrate how brilliant we are and how good they’re going to have to be if they want to join us (!!) and then we had tea and coffee and chat and Anne got people to sign up for auditions if they were so inclined or to ‘think about it’ if they 1. hated us; 2. were scared off or 3. actually wanted to think about it.
I will let you know how successful we have been in finding some new members as soon as the results of this interesting exercise are known. If we don’t manage to fill all the places perhaps we’ll repeat the IE because it was really rather fun and somewhere out there must be the perfect Rudsambeeites just waiting to discover us and to be discovered.
Big hugs.
Claire
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