‘Twas Robin who spake as above the above and I have to agree with him. Me neither. And it’s not all that exciting, sadly. A woody, drummy sort of a sound with a slide to it. Much as you’d expect, really. But now we can say that we have heard a falling bodhran as can all ten choir members who made it to rehearsal this week.
Yes, ten. A rather pathetic turn-out but I think Ollie had had apologies of one sort or another from all the absentees. He seemed prepared for the eventuality. To the point that he’d decided in advance that there was little point singing at all as there was little we could do with such small numbers. “We’ll have tea and chat,” he announced, “and maybe have a talk with Nikos about a guitar. I’ll go and put the kettle on.” He did.
So, there we were, drinking tea and chatting when Kirsty rushed in, somewhat breathless, eyebrows ahoist and atwist, the apologies on the tip of her tongue frozen there in consternation at the sight that met her eyes. “What’s this?” she demanded. “I feel like I’ve gone through the looking-glass, I’m upside down. Looking at things through the wrong end of a tele-thingy.” Rather mixed images. You will agree but she was extremely confused and who can blame her? Tea and chat happens at the end of the evening. She must have wondered just how late she was and what had happened to the missing 90 minutes. “We’re not going to sing tonight,” someone explained. “Why ever not?” asks K, increasingly put-out. “There’s not enough of us.” “Of course there is. We must sing. I have had such a day. I need to sing.”
So we sang.
Should Kirsty apply for Ollie’s job? She’d certainly whip us into shape, as someone pointed out.
We were given a new piece to look at. A new (to us) Tormis piece, no less. It’s quite some time since we had one of those. Not sure what it’s called because I kindly let Heather retain our shared copy but it had something to do with a bridge [it's called Bridge of Song]. A musical bridge: starts quietly, gets louder and louder, decrescendos. Starts low, gets higher and higher, makes its way back down. You get the picture. The words are in Finnish and Estonian – two for the price of one for those language counters who frequent our concerts – and translate into something rather lovely. Will fill you in on that when I get my own music. It wasn’t hard to sight-read. And it was fun.
Really.
Then we sang the new Lully piece so that Nikos could have a look at the guitar part and that was when the bodhran fell down.
We sang the other two Lully Entrées and I think that was all we did. But we did it well and our small-group status proved that small can, indeed, be beautiful. I suggested we keep the new Tormis for ourselves. Long time since we’ve had an official Small Group number. ‘bout time we got that going again methinks.
So – the reason you didn’t hear from me last week was because I wasn’t there. Or here, for that matter. I missed lots of exciting things. Working on Nikos’s composition for a start, which we haven’t done for ages. Unfortunately I think there were several people missing last week too and this included all the altos, aside from new Sarah. (I know where I was and why but what about the others eh? Eh??)
Ol’s last concert with us will not be until we sing at St Giles in August. Instead of a concert in May we will be recording a new CD – quite a short one like "A Flea in the Ear" – which Helen will come and engineer. We can put on it things we have loved singing with Ollie and we are to be encouraged to make suggestions as to what might be included. Cool, eh?
Happy Easter, everyone. May the Bunny be good to you.
Chocolate, ho!
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