Wasn’t and isn’t it just? I should be going out to the shops but I really can’t summon up the energy or spirit necessary to venture forth. I went out in the worst of it yesterday (it was bad but not so very bad when I left the house but became quite vicious in terms of freezing wind and driving rain once I got too far down the road to make it worth turning for home again) and my coat is not yet dry or my face thawed out (still, that’ll save on the botox bills, eh?) so for now I am staying in and food and other fundamentals will have to wait. I won’t starve though I may struggle. (Emergency food parcels, anyone? Anything will do!)
At least our wayward weather waited until after rehearsal on Wednesday evening to really get going, although both Sebastian and Harriet had to battle against the elements on their bicycles to get there. Sebastian looked so bewildered and exhausted when he arrived that I thought he must be going down with something but he assured me it was just the journey that had floored him. Harriet looked fine and fresh-faced which is what comes of being young and fit but she admitted to having struggled quite significantly uphill against the wind on her way. Presumably that means she’d be heading downhill on her return so let’s hope she managed to stay in control and didn’t end up careering off course and over the horizon. We need her.
We began proceedings with a look at a new piece – a traditional Syrian/Iraqi song arranged by Salim Bali called High Above the Palm Tree. It is lovely though the pronunciation of the Arabic words is proving tricky – not a surprise. There is a sheet provided with instructions of how to pronounce the various variously accented vowels and what is meant by the ‘ symbol and the dots underneath the occasional letter (well – they tell us there are dots underneath occasional letters but so far we’ve not found any) but this is all very well. It is much more difficult to interpret this well-meaning helpfulness than whoever provided it can possibly imagine. Add to this advice as to how some of the throaty sounds should be produced ("imagine you are cleaning your glasses and breathe out hard" – not so easy in the middle of a song) and the fact that the most oft encountered vowel sound (an ‘o’ with a line on the top) is not mentioned at all and you see the problem. Compensation lies in the fact that we are allowed to sing a very brash ‘ay’ sound (this we can do because we do it a great deal anyway particularly when it sounds really horrid and inappropriate) instead of having to ‘ah’. In fact there is an irony here in the fact that Ollie is struggling to get us to sound brash enough. Of course if we succeed in pleasing him in this respect it may bode badly for his blood-pressure when he has to try and get us to sound sweet and rounded again – brassy and bel canto do not bide well together.
We started looking at this before everyone had arrived so there was a bit of shuffling around to get people in a position where they were close to their musical allies. Jenny got lost across the other side of the room from we altos but she seemed perfectly at ease between the sops and the basses. Her first fit of giggles erupted not long after she arrived when she placed some sheets of paper on the table and Susan spluttered "Good God, she’s got her music with her". This IS an unusual occurrence these days – even during concerts Jenny’s file is often empty. Working at a proper job (a few hours a week) and being organised is, as I believe I have had occasion to mention before, something our Jen finds problematic. But she was, indeed, in possession of her music (or what passed for it, anyway; it may, of course, have been an extensive shopping list or a developing short story. Or some grubby old paper she’d snatched up on leaving home to fool us all) and so she was able to carol away without leaning over a shoulder or straining her neck (or someone else’s (mine)) for a change.
Next up, St John’s horsey. This is really coming on now. Susan did a lovely demonstration of a trotting steed – well, it has to be a pony as she’s so small; can a pony be dubbed a ‘steed’? – and I suggested that we have her displaying her interpretive equine dancing skills in front of the choir whenever we sing this in concert – I’m sure it would go down a storm.
There again, do we need another storm?
Just a thought.
Our final job of the evening was to make some more headway with Leonardo. Starting, as usual, with bar 30 we sang and practised our way through to the end of bar 91 and then picked up again at the last note of 115 and sang to the end (well, most people did – more of that later). The bars between 91 and 115 are, according to our Lord and Master, "terrifying". Goody. I presume he considers the bars up to 30 equally scary as we’ve not tried them (officially) yet though the women had a glance at them last week. Personally I find the last 7 pages rather trying. I had to leave my other alto compadres once we reached page 21 and go to join Jenny in the (vain) hope that she’d be singing the right thing and therefore prove of some assistance. I think between us we got every third or fourth note right. As for the last bit – on the face of it this is easy. On the face of it. I managed to sing some of the right notes (in the wrong places, naturally) and wrong notes in the right places (if that’s even possible) but, on the whole, the wrong note in the wrong place entirely was all I could manage. Sing it properly?? Not a chance. And I’ve no idea what Mrs Fardell was up to but I don’t think she was much closer to the music, as written, than I was. I’m afraid this resulted in complete hysteria. Just as well we were at the end of the evening’s work or the BW might have been a tad annoyed because I could hardly breathe and had tears pouring down my face and Jen was as bad. I have an uncomfortable feeling she may have been laughing AT me rather than with but, hey! I can take it. No one could say that her amusement was misplaced.
So to notes – "Any chance you two could control yourselves for a moment?" asked the patient Anne. "About as much chance as of us singing in tune," was my reply. But we did - eventually. A decision about the Poland trip – no for this year. Not enough of us able to commit. But a yes for London in May, so that gives us something to work for and to look forward to. Anne won’t be able to make it, neither will Anna Lauren or Luke (who will either be a dad by then or anticipating the imminent arrival of offspring) and Chris feels it is unlikely that he will make it as he has a pile of college work to hand in the following week (is this a good excuse? Several people thought not!) which is a shame but we will manage without them (just) and a weekend in London will be fun and frolicky for the rest of us.
you soon xx
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Hurry, hurry, rush, rush
Hello, mes amies – I’m off to Munich in the morning and to the Trav tonight so have to get this done NOW. Oh, the pressure! I have a French tiler in the kitchen, an assortment of costume-designing young ladies in one daughter’s bedroom, sewing and chatting (mostly chatting, I imagine) and demanding occasional input from expert seamstress, me - (actually all I’ve done is trundle out to buy plastic-covered steel boning and fail dismally to come up with an answer as to the whereabouts of the sewing-machine zipper foot); another daughter upstairs expecting ideas for her next craft-spot appearance on"‘The Hour" (STV!!) and then to spend time with her mother (disappointed in the second instance if not the first – which was a bit dodgy originality-wise but better than nothing), a bag to pack and this to write. Never tell me my life is empty... or that my sentences make sense.
So, to last night. A very good rehearsal. Small group once again too small – this is becoming repetitive. Ollie is going to use the time to do note-bashing on our new pieces instead until things look up a bit. This will be very useful but not as much fun. Maybe, eventually, enough people will start appearing early and we will be able to embark on a little something extra.
When I arrived there were already a few hardy and dedicated folk trilling away at the new Tormis piece – St. John’s Steed, if you remember. Once I had worked out where in the music they were and then worked out what my note was supposed to be (I was the only Alto again so it took a while!) I joined in and was pleased with how much I remembered. I have realised there is something to be said sometimes for being less than brilliant at the old music theory (and practice, let’s be honest) because the fact that the bar lines are all wonky and bar 40 for the women is not bar 40 for the men worries me not at all; whereas Anne – who is an excellent musician – was horribly confused by such inconsistencies (though she seemed to have come to terms with the madness by the end of the evening). We spent quite a long time on this once everyone had gathered and all to good purpose as it was really beginning to sound almost good. There is one point – well, the end, actually – where the Altos have a good deep swoop down (to an F, or something; I just sing the notes once we get below a G – don’t expect me to recognise them. The violin doesn’t go any lower than that so neither does my knowledge) and Christopher gave me such a look at that moment whilst guffawing loudly and suggested that my voice had just broken. I’m not sure if he meant as in adolescent boy or shattered crockery but he had to add – hurriedly – that he’d only commented because he was impressed. Yeah, right.
Galloping on, we began working on Hide and Seek, well, Sang it a bit and then separated to look at it more specifically. Half of us know this one really well and the others not at all so it is important to make sure that the old’uns are not singing what they think is right but isn’t and the newbies have a chance to learn it properly from the beginning. Heather is thoroughly depressed by it. Thinks it the most miserable thing! I can see why. And it’s very low and manly in places which may be depressing her spirits further. But I like it. That may be because I’m one of the manly women. And even I find it rather growly, broken voice and all.
I took some notes during this song and the next in order to enliven the blog as I felt my efforts last week were a little dull to say the least. Unfortunately I left my music and, therefore, my notes at John and Susan’s last night so they’ll be no jollying this up unless I can remember some of the jolly things that were said and done. Which I can’t. Oops.
I’ve just been asked to advise on bullet-holes in clothing and recipes for bloodstains. Had you any idea my knowledge spans so many diverse and peculiar matters? I gave my opinion and prodded various sharp instruments through a piece of material in order to demonstrate likely techniques to achieve a realistic result but as I have absolutely no first-hand experience of bullet-holes this may have been worse than useless. And anyway, it seems to me, there are as many different bullet-holes as there are types of bullet and range of shot, are there not? And then what about shotgun pellets?????
Lastly we reminded ourselves of a very small part of Leonardo during which our Jenny became very dramatic indeed on the word "siren" (as in sea nymph not fire engine) and then we finished – early, I think, but we had worked hard. We women even harder than the men because we got to grips with things faster than they did and, in our spare time while we waited (and waited) for them, started working on the beginning of Leonardo which, up to now, the Boy Wonder has been avoiding. We know why!
A word in praise of Harriet who was the only Soprano1 present all evening and did a great job in very trying circumstances, with extremely tricksy music which would have had many an older Rudsambeeite in all sorts of a mess.
Some discussion as to the viability of going to Poland when numbers available and willing to do so are rather lower than would be ideal. Personally I don’t see the point of going if there are only half of us there to sing as we couldn’t do the usual repertoire and this would be totally unrepresentative of the choir as it is now and probably a huge disappointment for the Poles who would be expecting something akin to what they’ve heard on the CD we sent them. Still, we’ll see. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity but maybe we should leave it for another time when more people are willing to commit to it.
Never short of an opinion, am I?
Time to stop. Will attempt to make notes and bring them home next week – promise.
Have a good weekend. Think of me in freezing, snowy Munich. Brrrrr….
So, to last night. A very good rehearsal. Small group once again too small – this is becoming repetitive. Ollie is going to use the time to do note-bashing on our new pieces instead until things look up a bit. This will be very useful but not as much fun. Maybe, eventually, enough people will start appearing early and we will be able to embark on a little something extra.
When I arrived there were already a few hardy and dedicated folk trilling away at the new Tormis piece – St. John’s Steed, if you remember. Once I had worked out where in the music they were and then worked out what my note was supposed to be (I was the only Alto again so it took a while!) I joined in and was pleased with how much I remembered. I have realised there is something to be said sometimes for being less than brilliant at the old music theory (and practice, let’s be honest) because the fact that the bar lines are all wonky and bar 40 for the women is not bar 40 for the men worries me not at all; whereas Anne – who is an excellent musician – was horribly confused by such inconsistencies (though she seemed to have come to terms with the madness by the end of the evening). We spent quite a long time on this once everyone had gathered and all to good purpose as it was really beginning to sound almost good. There is one point – well, the end, actually – where the Altos have a good deep swoop down (to an F, or something; I just sing the notes once we get below a G – don’t expect me to recognise them. The violin doesn’t go any lower than that so neither does my knowledge) and Christopher gave me such a look at that moment whilst guffawing loudly and suggested that my voice had just broken. I’m not sure if he meant as in adolescent boy or shattered crockery but he had to add – hurriedly – that he’d only commented because he was impressed. Yeah, right.
Galloping on, we began working on Hide and Seek, well, Sang it a bit and then separated to look at it more specifically. Half of us know this one really well and the others not at all so it is important to make sure that the old’uns are not singing what they think is right but isn’t and the newbies have a chance to learn it properly from the beginning. Heather is thoroughly depressed by it. Thinks it the most miserable thing! I can see why. And it’s very low and manly in places which may be depressing her spirits further. But I like it. That may be because I’m one of the manly women. And even I find it rather growly, broken voice and all.
I took some notes during this song and the next in order to enliven the blog as I felt my efforts last week were a little dull to say the least. Unfortunately I left my music and, therefore, my notes at John and Susan’s last night so they’ll be no jollying this up unless I can remember some of the jolly things that were said and done. Which I can’t. Oops.
I’ve just been asked to advise on bullet-holes in clothing and recipes for bloodstains. Had you any idea my knowledge spans so many diverse and peculiar matters? I gave my opinion and prodded various sharp instruments through a piece of material in order to demonstrate likely techniques to achieve a realistic result but as I have absolutely no first-hand experience of bullet-holes this may have been worse than useless. And anyway, it seems to me, there are as many different bullet-holes as there are types of bullet and range of shot, are there not? And then what about shotgun pellets?????
Lastly we reminded ourselves of a very small part of Leonardo during which our Jenny became very dramatic indeed on the word "siren" (as in sea nymph not fire engine) and then we finished – early, I think, but we had worked hard. We women even harder than the men because we got to grips with things faster than they did and, in our spare time while we waited (and waited) for them, started working on the beginning of Leonardo which, up to now, the Boy Wonder has been avoiding. We know why!
A word in praise of Harriet who was the only Soprano1 present all evening and did a great job in very trying circumstances, with extremely tricksy music which would have had many an older Rudsambeeite in all sorts of a mess.
Some discussion as to the viability of going to Poland when numbers available and willing to do so are rather lower than would be ideal. Personally I don’t see the point of going if there are only half of us there to sing as we couldn’t do the usual repertoire and this would be totally unrepresentative of the choir as it is now and probably a huge disappointment for the Poles who would be expecting something akin to what they’ve heard on the CD we sent them. Still, we’ll see. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity but maybe we should leave it for another time when more people are willing to commit to it.
Never short of an opinion, am I?
Time to stop. Will attempt to make notes and bring them home next week – promise.
Have a good weekend. Think of me in freezing, snowy Munich. Brrrrr….
Sunday, 23 January 2011
All in a Small Room
We tried small group again this week but once again it was too small to do anything. Somehow we need to lure in a few more people. Ollie thinks he will have to choose something exciting to do and then, maybe, more of us will turn up. We had no Tenors at all – except for the BW who doesn’t really count (though he does occasionally like to join us in song and may well have to if the situation re numbers doesn’t improve) and only one Alto (me. And we all know how useless I am on my own).
Instead of starting something new we had a look at that magnificent man in his flying machine, reminding ourselves of what we learned last week and as we sang more people turned up and as more people turned up we went further and learned more. I actually remembered and managed to sing all on me lonesome – the right notes and everything. You may recall that the Altos have a lot of la-ing to do in this one. Seven pages of it, in fact; I just counted. Seven pages, then a break while the ‘la’s are interrupted by rather more interesting text and then we’re back to the L-word for another couple of pages at the end. It’s quite hard work – does funny things to the tongue. Luckily it’s not all on one note. And it may sound as if it’s really boring but it’s really not. Honest.
But I do think I need to get my eyes seen to. The sight-reading is quite bad enough without being obstructed by poor vision. Caused, I have to point out, by poor lighting.
(We spent all evening in the piano room this week and it’s not exactly brightly lit in there if you bag a spot by the radiator). I can still see to thread a needle if the light’s good enough (and the needle big enough and using string instead of cotton!) and I am loath to give my eyes the excuse to become as lazy as their owner - that is what happens, I believe, if one wears glasses – but trying to read little black dots on thin black lines, at speed, in not very good light, at the end of a long day... well, is it any wonder I sing rubbish??
Having sung through to the end of Leonardo (though without having even glanced at the beginning of it yet, which makes one question what is in store for us when we try to tackle that section) we did a bit of Desh-ing. I got all sorts of bits of it right this time which have never been right before but there’s still a fair few places (the end, which we learned last, in a break from tradition) where I am floundering and which I MUST look at properly before next week. I can do either the words or the tune (rhythm) but not both – trying to do both sends my eyes off in different directions. Everyone else seems to have got the hang of this one, though, because it is sounding good.
We have a new piece of Tormis – Jaani Hobu, or St. John’s Steed. It is a sort of round with other things going on and it is very repetitive, thank God, because it will, eventually, go very fast. We have done O Morgenstern where the Tenors and Sopranos sing in a different key to the Altos and Basses and now we have this where everyone seems to be singing in a different time signature. 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 we are instructed at the beginning and several people were wondering aloud how it was possible to do all three at once. Well, of course, we don’t do it all at once but there’s a bar of this, a bar of that; the Tenors and Basses are doing one thing while the Altos and Sopranos do another, everyone comes together for a bit then off we all go on our separate ways again. And there are the key changes too, of course. Our Lord and Master was quite surprised and impressed with how quickly we got the hang of it (I’m not sure what that says about his belief in our ability) but get the hang of it we did and pretty quickly, too. Somehow it was really quite easy. Odd.
There’s not much else to report. Anna Lauren was back with us having had a trying time getting away to America for Christmas. Original flight cancelled so spent Christmas day driving down to London in order to catch a plane on Boxing Day – nightmare.
It seems our Polish choir will not be able to visit this year though they are still happy to have us over there. No idea what we’ll do about the trip now but no doubt decisions will have to be made soonish. If we go it will be in September, by the look of things, so maybe we’ll get to sing in London in May after all, which would be nice. I should have said last week that Luke IS GOING TO BE A DAD – yey! Another Rudsambee baby. What a fecund lot. Imagine how incredibly exciting it would be if we had more potential fathers in the Tenor section. Ah well, one can dream...
And on that note - time for bed.
xx
Instead of starting something new we had a look at that magnificent man in his flying machine, reminding ourselves of what we learned last week and as we sang more people turned up and as more people turned up we went further and learned more. I actually remembered and managed to sing all on me lonesome – the right notes and everything. You may recall that the Altos have a lot of la-ing to do in this one. Seven pages of it, in fact; I just counted. Seven pages, then a break while the ‘la’s are interrupted by rather more interesting text and then we’re back to the L-word for another couple of pages at the end. It’s quite hard work – does funny things to the tongue. Luckily it’s not all on one note. And it may sound as if it’s really boring but it’s really not. Honest.
But I do think I need to get my eyes seen to. The sight-reading is quite bad enough without being obstructed by poor vision. Caused, I have to point out, by poor lighting.
(We spent all evening in the piano room this week and it’s not exactly brightly lit in there if you bag a spot by the radiator). I can still see to thread a needle if the light’s good enough (and the needle big enough and using string instead of cotton!) and I am loath to give my eyes the excuse to become as lazy as their owner - that is what happens, I believe, if one wears glasses – but trying to read little black dots on thin black lines, at speed, in not very good light, at the end of a long day... well, is it any wonder I sing rubbish??
Having sung through to the end of Leonardo (though without having even glanced at the beginning of it yet, which makes one question what is in store for us when we try to tackle that section) we did a bit of Desh-ing. I got all sorts of bits of it right this time which have never been right before but there’s still a fair few places (the end, which we learned last, in a break from tradition) where I am floundering and which I MUST look at properly before next week. I can do either the words or the tune (rhythm) but not both – trying to do both sends my eyes off in different directions. Everyone else seems to have got the hang of this one, though, because it is sounding good.
We have a new piece of Tormis – Jaani Hobu, or St. John’s Steed. It is a sort of round with other things going on and it is very repetitive, thank God, because it will, eventually, go very fast. We have done O Morgenstern where the Tenors and Sopranos sing in a different key to the Altos and Basses and now we have this where everyone seems to be singing in a different time signature. 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 we are instructed at the beginning and several people were wondering aloud how it was possible to do all three at once. Well, of course, we don’t do it all at once but there’s a bar of this, a bar of that; the Tenors and Basses are doing one thing while the Altos and Sopranos do another, everyone comes together for a bit then off we all go on our separate ways again. And there are the key changes too, of course. Our Lord and Master was quite surprised and impressed with how quickly we got the hang of it (I’m not sure what that says about his belief in our ability) but get the hang of it we did and pretty quickly, too. Somehow it was really quite easy. Odd.
There’s not much else to report. Anna Lauren was back with us having had a trying time getting away to America for Christmas. Original flight cancelled so spent Christmas day driving down to London in order to catch a plane on Boxing Day – nightmare.
It seems our Polish choir will not be able to visit this year though they are still happy to have us over there. No idea what we’ll do about the trip now but no doubt decisions will have to be made soonish. If we go it will be in September, by the look of things, so maybe we’ll get to sing in London in May after all, which would be nice. I should have said last week that Luke IS GOING TO BE A DAD – yey! Another Rudsambee baby. What a fecund lot. Imagine how incredibly exciting it would be if we had more potential fathers in the Tenor section. Ah well, one can dream...
And on that note - time for bed.
xx
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Off We Go Again!
Well, hellooooooh! Happy New Year to you (all) – slightly belated I know but heartfelt all the same, I assure you. Did you (all) have lovely festive season(s)? Mine was a little weird to tell the truth but my presents were good (both those I gave and those I received) and that’s what matters, eh? Chris went to Ollie’s for Christmas but it must have been rubbish because his festive highlight, apparently, was watching a group of straight men drinking cherry Lambrini, or some such aberration, on New Year’s Eve. Our Boy Wonder was a little put-out at hearing this, as you can imagine. But really, what can you expect from a rainbow-haired troll who wears shorts in the middle of winter? (Longish shorts, you’ll be delighted to hear. The thought of him in short-shorts is enough to have a body being carted off by the white-coated ones).
I should probably have started back with the blogging a week ago when we had our first meeting but I didn’t and, as I have determined not to employ the overused s...y word at all if I can help it, I have to inform you that I am not s...y at all, so there. I had far too much to think about and complain about and worry about (new kitchen: don’t do it if you want to remain sane and even marginally pleasant to be around) to be bothering with telling you of our start-of-year discussions concerning what 2011 holds - and may hold - in store for Rudsambee. In short, we may go on an exchange-type, concert trip to Poland in either May or September and host the Polish choir in June; we may go and sing in London in May if we’re not going to Poland; we may sing in Rosslyn at Christmas if they’ll have us; we may go to Cranshaws at some point in the year to earn the money they gave us two years ago for a concert we couldn’t get to through the snow; we will sing in St Giles in both August and December and the National Gallery in April. We may – horror of horrors – lose our Boy Wonder after he finishes his Masters later this year and will therefore have to start thinking about how we recruit a new Director. This topic caused lively discussion with no absolute decision made as to how we might go about it but several ideas, including putting out a request for interested parties on the university Music Dept website. Ol reckons this would yield a fair amount of interest and that we could replace him in the twitching of a baton. Never! I think that kidnap and coercion will be necessary. We have to do something. After all he’s too young to appreciate his potential predicament - namely, whatever would he do without us!?
Anne is preparing to give up being administrator-extraordinaire; believe it or not we had an expression of interest in the post from Heather – hurrah for newbies!! She thinks that, with a little off-loading of extraneous duties, she will manage the job without too much difficulty and as some of those extraneous duties can be off-loaded fairly easily (as long as no one suggests I take on any of them!!) it looks as if we may have a replacement for irreplaceable Anne. Though Heather will have to go it some (oh, what a delightfully ugly expression that is!) to fill the post as brilliantly as the perfectly-pitched person who has always seemed so indispensable.
Along with Anne will go our Treasurer, Dick, but Susan has offered to take on this role. We are hoping that her lack of understanding of the words "household accounts" (they mean nothing to me, either) and her willingness to shred a cheque for several thousand pounds at the behest of her husband will not impact upon her performance as keeper of the Rudsambee books.
Enough, enough. Since all this we have had a proper rehearsal and I have to leave room to tell you something of Wednesday evening’s activities. We tried to re-establish small group but the group was so small that we were unable to make much of a start. Once a few extra folk arrived we sang through that old favourite Star of the County Down and eventually (if you were me) sort-of remembered how it was supposed to go. It may be that we have to find some pieces with fewer splits if there are only going to be a handful of us arriving at 7.15 but Ollie seems keen to do something and I am too. Somehow it’s easier to leave the house earlier than to sit down for a bit, get comfy and then have to haul myself up and off to Morningside for 7.45. Jenny is going to find it difficult to be there on time which will be a bit of a disaster if we need ff Alto2s because I can only do ff if it’s on the right note. Still we’ll see how it goes and if you come to a concert and there’s a small group piece and you see me going puce you’ll know that I’m trying to sing loudly all by myself and struggling badly without me buddy-slash-partner-in-crime.
When it got to rehearsal proper we started with Desh and played at being Indian instruments again. Joy. Love it. Can’t sing it but love it all the same! Actually, there’s fast and tricky bits which get my eyes all crossed, my tongue all twisted and my brain badly whisked but apart from that it’s fine.
We then started work on a new Eric Whitacre (yum) piece called – with consummate simplicity - Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. That’ll take up some room on a programme. And the song is much longer than the title – 13 double-sided pages! That’ll take up some time in a concert. Ollie sent the girls off with Anne to work on a very short section which took an age to get the hang of! Once we’d made some headway we moved on to the bit where Leo gets up the nerve to take off and as this involves lots of ‘la’-ing on one note for the Alto2s, all Jenny and I have to do is to remember (how) to count. All the way up to thirteen. Hmm. I think everyone else is being much more complicated while we 'la' but I was counting too hard to notice. I did notice, however, that this will be stunning once we know what we’re doing.
After getting back together again to sing what we’d learned (!) we moved on to reprising Hide and Seek, an Imogen Heap song we performed on several occasions a while ago with some success, so much so that we recorded it! Of course, our new members have not sung this before and I have no idea what they made of it as it is a little strange and the words make no sense at all but it is fun to sing and one of one of my daughter’s friends said it was her favourite piece when we sang it in St Giles a year or two ago and she being young and therefore, presumably, knowing what’s what this has to be viewed as encouraging, doesn’t it? This is also a long song – 16 dsps – and with Desh at 7.5 it looks as if our lord and master is attempting to arrange the shortest full-length Rudsambee concert in history. Three songs and almost a full programme already!!!
There then. Blog numero 1 done and dusted (unlike my kitchen). Time for beddy-byes. Until next time... (note I don’t say ‘next week’. Better safe than s...y).
xx
I should probably have started back with the blogging a week ago when we had our first meeting but I didn’t and, as I have determined not to employ the overused s...y word at all if I can help it, I have to inform you that I am not s...y at all, so there. I had far too much to think about and complain about and worry about (new kitchen: don’t do it if you want to remain sane and even marginally pleasant to be around) to be bothering with telling you of our start-of-year discussions concerning what 2011 holds - and may hold - in store for Rudsambee. In short, we may go on an exchange-type, concert trip to Poland in either May or September and host the Polish choir in June; we may go and sing in London in May if we’re not going to Poland; we may sing in Rosslyn at Christmas if they’ll have us; we may go to Cranshaws at some point in the year to earn the money they gave us two years ago for a concert we couldn’t get to through the snow; we will sing in St Giles in both August and December and the National Gallery in April. We may – horror of horrors – lose our Boy Wonder after he finishes his Masters later this year and will therefore have to start thinking about how we recruit a new Director. This topic caused lively discussion with no absolute decision made as to how we might go about it but several ideas, including putting out a request for interested parties on the university Music Dept website. Ol reckons this would yield a fair amount of interest and that we could replace him in the twitching of a baton. Never! I think that kidnap and coercion will be necessary. We have to do something. After all he’s too young to appreciate his potential predicament - namely, whatever would he do without us!?
Anne is preparing to give up being administrator-extraordinaire; believe it or not we had an expression of interest in the post from Heather – hurrah for newbies!! She thinks that, with a little off-loading of extraneous duties, she will manage the job without too much difficulty and as some of those extraneous duties can be off-loaded fairly easily (as long as no one suggests I take on any of them!!) it looks as if we may have a replacement for irreplaceable Anne. Though Heather will have to go it some (oh, what a delightfully ugly expression that is!) to fill the post as brilliantly as the perfectly-pitched person who has always seemed so indispensable.
Along with Anne will go our Treasurer, Dick, but Susan has offered to take on this role. We are hoping that her lack of understanding of the words "household accounts" (they mean nothing to me, either) and her willingness to shred a cheque for several thousand pounds at the behest of her husband will not impact upon her performance as keeper of the Rudsambee books.
Enough, enough. Since all this we have had a proper rehearsal and I have to leave room to tell you something of Wednesday evening’s activities. We tried to re-establish small group but the group was so small that we were unable to make much of a start. Once a few extra folk arrived we sang through that old favourite Star of the County Down and eventually (if you were me) sort-of remembered how it was supposed to go. It may be that we have to find some pieces with fewer splits if there are only going to be a handful of us arriving at 7.15 but Ollie seems keen to do something and I am too. Somehow it’s easier to leave the house earlier than to sit down for a bit, get comfy and then have to haul myself up and off to Morningside for 7.45. Jenny is going to find it difficult to be there on time which will be a bit of a disaster if we need ff Alto2s because I can only do ff if it’s on the right note. Still we’ll see how it goes and if you come to a concert and there’s a small group piece and you see me going puce you’ll know that I’m trying to sing loudly all by myself and struggling badly without me buddy-slash-partner-in-crime.
When it got to rehearsal proper we started with Desh and played at being Indian instruments again. Joy. Love it. Can’t sing it but love it all the same! Actually, there’s fast and tricky bits which get my eyes all crossed, my tongue all twisted and my brain badly whisked but apart from that it’s fine.
We then started work on a new Eric Whitacre (yum) piece called – with consummate simplicity - Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. That’ll take up some room on a programme. And the song is much longer than the title – 13 double-sided pages! That’ll take up some time in a concert. Ollie sent the girls off with Anne to work on a very short section which took an age to get the hang of! Once we’d made some headway we moved on to the bit where Leo gets up the nerve to take off and as this involves lots of ‘la’-ing on one note for the Alto2s, all Jenny and I have to do is to remember (how) to count. All the way up to thirteen. Hmm. I think everyone else is being much more complicated while we 'la' but I was counting too hard to notice. I did notice, however, that this will be stunning once we know what we’re doing.
After getting back together again to sing what we’d learned (!) we moved on to reprising Hide and Seek, an Imogen Heap song we performed on several occasions a while ago with some success, so much so that we recorded it! Of course, our new members have not sung this before and I have no idea what they made of it as it is a little strange and the words make no sense at all but it is fun to sing and one of one of my daughter’s friends said it was her favourite piece when we sang it in St Giles a year or two ago and she being young and therefore, presumably, knowing what’s what this has to be viewed as encouraging, doesn’t it? This is also a long song – 16 dsps – and with Desh at 7.5 it looks as if our lord and master is attempting to arrange the shortest full-length Rudsambee concert in history. Three songs and almost a full programme already!!!
There then. Blog numero 1 done and dusted (unlike my kitchen). Time for beddy-byes. Until next time... (note I don’t say ‘next week’. Better safe than s...y).
xx
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Post-concert, Post-party, Last of 2010 (aaagh!)
So.
I promised a post-concert update and then decided that I might as well wait ‘til after the Christmas party, which is why I’m writing now and not three days ago. I am slightly sluggish of brain this morning (no, not due to excess alcohol) – that first sentence took me about five minutes to construct, two and a half minutes per letter, oh dear – and I suspect that this will be a very s...l...o...w process. But here’s hoping I have something to send you before the day is out for I have so much still to do in the way of present purchasing and tree sourcing and food buying and mince-pie making and cake baking and, most important of all, hair-do appointment attending (your faded-looking blogetteer is badly in need of beautification (as far as humanly possible anyway)), that if I fail I fear you may have to wait until New Year to hear about the aforementioned festive activities. Which already have that hazy, misty halo of something lovely too quickly forgotten. Which means this blog is probably not going to enlighten you very much. Which inevitably means deep disappointment. Which means I don’t deserve the present I received last night in recognition of my status as official Rudsambee Bloggetteer. Which was most unexpected, by the way. Which.
We, as I think I mentioned last blog, had to face the disappointment of a cancelled Rosslyn Chapel concert and much wasted hard work, the St Giles effort being so much shorter and so many well-rehearsed songs having to be put to one side, but we stormed into our one and only Christmas concert this year (yes, only one instead of the usual four – how bad is that?) all guns blazing and managed to get at least ten enthusiastic people lurching to their feet at the end (Quite an achievement when you think about it because if I had guns blazing at me I’d be diving for the floor). Jenny was counting the stander-uppers – loudly – and luckily there was significant applause or those still attached to their seats may have felt obliged to leave them, her manner of comment verging on the petulant, and one only wants genuine plaudits after all.
We were joined by our former holy-high-one, Helen, who had managed to escape the hurly-burly horrors of London Town for the weekend and came to sing with us. She didn’t know all the songs but seemed to manage to sing them anyway. Another pesky, show-offy sight-reader. The world seems to be full of them. I was delighted to be able to sing all the way through O Morgenstern without making a fool of myself by squeaking on the high notes – all that happened was the said notes were a little slow in coming out but when they appeared they did so smoothly and joined those already being sung by the other altos without making a spectacle of either themselves or me. There were the usual sticky moments though we all seem to have identified different ones which suggests that the concert was a mess which it wasn’t. Several people think the new African piece was the most malicious tripper-upper but my own personal nemesis for some reason was Dormi Jesu which I actually know off-by-heart but which seemed to go out-of-control for a few bars at one point and, as usual, I felt like it was all my fault though it may not have been. No idea what happened there but something nasty did. I’m not sure many people noticed. I hope not.
Tricky old (new) Jajang went very well, I think. I daresay we were all terrified and concentrating really hard. The faces may well have been a picture – I would like to have been watching – but as long as the sound was OK and the grimaces not too distracting... Our Natalie was actually sitting in the audience having decided not to sing as she’d missed so many rehearsals but she was no good as a commentator on appearance as she listened to the whole thing with her eyes closed. No doubt a sensible move. Many illusions could be undone by the untimely twitching of an eye-lid.
St Giles was warm and welcoming as usual (We would have had the welcome but not the warmth at Rosslyn. It is quite nice not to have to try and sing with chattering teeth and violent shivers to interfere with voice production). It was also pleasantly full - even more so than usual - which seemed to take our newbies by surprise. We may be a small choir but we do manage to get a large audience whenever we ‘do’ St Giles – I remember being quite overcome by the sight of so many people my first time there but they are a friendly, appreciative lot and not at all scary. Elaine and Alison were both there, as well a throng of other ex-Rudsambeeites – lovely to see them – and Elaine joined us for the post-concert feeding session at Vittoria’s so we had a chance to catch up a little with her life –after-Rudsambee. And we sang The Irish Blessing at her. She wasn’t allowed to escape it. She may have imagined that she was safe in a public place. Ha! Wrong.
Onto last night’s party which was woefully badly attended due to colds (man-flu, I mean), over-indulgence at lunch-time office Christmas parties and... exams (Exams??? – Should that ever prevent partying? Ever? I have an uncomfortable feeling we have let someone conscientious into the Rudsambeee ranks). Those of us who made it made it in style. Christopher wore a suit. You may think you need to visit an optician but no. A SUIT. With long trousers and everything. Even a tie. He looked remarkably smart. And very nearly grown-up. Behm wore a tie too. So did John. His had hieroglyphics on. Anne and Jenny sported their ball-gowns. I was sure that our rapidly shrinking Jen would be tumbling out of her dress this year but she assured me that certain parts of her anatomy are a large as ever and would keep everything in place. She was right, I’m glad to say.
Food, as always, excellent. Highlight for me – and not a few others – was Behm’s corn bread which was really cake but which we ate as a savoury (which may be how you’re supposed to do it – it worked anyway) – it was delicious. I think it should become a staple of our pot-luck parties. For as long as we have his company, anyway. John’s mulled wine was, as ever, very, very good indeed and a great time was had by all.
There was a great deal of conversation. I know there was. And much of it very amusing. I remember being rude about the tenors. More than once. I remember unsuitable-for-the-dinner-table subject matter but have no recollection of details. I do remember discussing nappies and the ecological impact thereof, potty-training and the dietry idiosyncrasies of an underweight mother with Kay. Perhaps anybody who reads this and regards this section as very poorly executed – which it most certainly is – could fill it out a bit with those all important particulars I seem to have forgotten, as usual. Not, I reiterate, due to the ravages of excess alcohol but because I only ever remember things these days if I make a special effort to do so and I wasn’t on duty last night - even if I should have been in order to earn my Christmas present; for which many thanks and I really do not deserve it.
Jenny is the buyer and distributor of pressies and did her job with her usual kind words and charm. I do hope she bought herself something as a thank-you present for a job well done. I was overcome to receive another gift – this time for the CD cover design – even more undeserved than the one for Chief Blogetteer. What a lucky woman I am. What a lovely choir Rudsambee is and what fun it has been to keep you (lot) informed about its goings-on.
So – that’s it for this year. Happy Christmas every one.
Here’s to a stellar 2011 (gulp!) xx
xx
I promised a post-concert update and then decided that I might as well wait ‘til after the Christmas party, which is why I’m writing now and not three days ago. I am slightly sluggish of brain this morning (no, not due to excess alcohol) – that first sentence took me about five minutes to construct, two and a half minutes per letter, oh dear – and I suspect that this will be a very s...l...o...w process. But here’s hoping I have something to send you before the day is out for I have so much still to do in the way of present purchasing and tree sourcing and food buying and mince-pie making and cake baking and, most important of all, hair-do appointment attending (your faded-looking blogetteer is badly in need of beautification (as far as humanly possible anyway)), that if I fail I fear you may have to wait until New Year to hear about the aforementioned festive activities. Which already have that hazy, misty halo of something lovely too quickly forgotten. Which means this blog is probably not going to enlighten you very much. Which inevitably means deep disappointment. Which means I don’t deserve the present I received last night in recognition of my status as official Rudsambee Bloggetteer. Which was most unexpected, by the way. Which.
We, as I think I mentioned last blog, had to face the disappointment of a cancelled Rosslyn Chapel concert and much wasted hard work, the St Giles effort being so much shorter and so many well-rehearsed songs having to be put to one side, but we stormed into our one and only Christmas concert this year (yes, only one instead of the usual four – how bad is that?) all guns blazing and managed to get at least ten enthusiastic people lurching to their feet at the end (Quite an achievement when you think about it because if I had guns blazing at me I’d be diving for the floor). Jenny was counting the stander-uppers – loudly – and luckily there was significant applause or those still attached to their seats may have felt obliged to leave them, her manner of comment verging on the petulant, and one only wants genuine plaudits after all.
We were joined by our former holy-high-one, Helen, who had managed to escape the hurly-burly horrors of London Town for the weekend and came to sing with us. She didn’t know all the songs but seemed to manage to sing them anyway. Another pesky, show-offy sight-reader. The world seems to be full of them. I was delighted to be able to sing all the way through O Morgenstern without making a fool of myself by squeaking on the high notes – all that happened was the said notes were a little slow in coming out but when they appeared they did so smoothly and joined those already being sung by the other altos without making a spectacle of either themselves or me. There were the usual sticky moments though we all seem to have identified different ones which suggests that the concert was a mess which it wasn’t. Several people think the new African piece was the most malicious tripper-upper but my own personal nemesis for some reason was Dormi Jesu which I actually know off-by-heart but which seemed to go out-of-control for a few bars at one point and, as usual, I felt like it was all my fault though it may not have been. No idea what happened there but something nasty did. I’m not sure many people noticed. I hope not.
Tricky old (new) Jajang went very well, I think. I daresay we were all terrified and concentrating really hard. The faces may well have been a picture – I would like to have been watching – but as long as the sound was OK and the grimaces not too distracting... Our Natalie was actually sitting in the audience having decided not to sing as she’d missed so many rehearsals but she was no good as a commentator on appearance as she listened to the whole thing with her eyes closed. No doubt a sensible move. Many illusions could be undone by the untimely twitching of an eye-lid.
St Giles was warm and welcoming as usual (We would have had the welcome but not the warmth at Rosslyn. It is quite nice not to have to try and sing with chattering teeth and violent shivers to interfere with voice production). It was also pleasantly full - even more so than usual - which seemed to take our newbies by surprise. We may be a small choir but we do manage to get a large audience whenever we ‘do’ St Giles – I remember being quite overcome by the sight of so many people my first time there but they are a friendly, appreciative lot and not at all scary. Elaine and Alison were both there, as well a throng of other ex-Rudsambeeites – lovely to see them – and Elaine joined us for the post-concert feeding session at Vittoria’s so we had a chance to catch up a little with her life –after-Rudsambee. And we sang The Irish Blessing at her. She wasn’t allowed to escape it. She may have imagined that she was safe in a public place. Ha! Wrong.
Onto last night’s party which was woefully badly attended due to colds (man-flu, I mean), over-indulgence at lunch-time office Christmas parties and... exams (Exams??? – Should that ever prevent partying? Ever? I have an uncomfortable feeling we have let someone conscientious into the Rudsambeee ranks). Those of us who made it made it in style. Christopher wore a suit. You may think you need to visit an optician but no. A SUIT. With long trousers and everything. Even a tie. He looked remarkably smart. And very nearly grown-up. Behm wore a tie too. So did John. His had hieroglyphics on. Anne and Jenny sported their ball-gowns. I was sure that our rapidly shrinking Jen would be tumbling out of her dress this year but she assured me that certain parts of her anatomy are a large as ever and would keep everything in place. She was right, I’m glad to say.
Food, as always, excellent. Highlight for me – and not a few others – was Behm’s corn bread which was really cake but which we ate as a savoury (which may be how you’re supposed to do it – it worked anyway) – it was delicious. I think it should become a staple of our pot-luck parties. For as long as we have his company, anyway. John’s mulled wine was, as ever, very, very good indeed and a great time was had by all.
There was a great deal of conversation. I know there was. And much of it very amusing. I remember being rude about the tenors. More than once. I remember unsuitable-for-the-dinner-table subject matter but have no recollection of details. I do remember discussing nappies and the ecological impact thereof, potty-training and the dietry idiosyncrasies of an underweight mother with Kay. Perhaps anybody who reads this and regards this section as very poorly executed – which it most certainly is – could fill it out a bit with those all important particulars I seem to have forgotten, as usual. Not, I reiterate, due to the ravages of excess alcohol but because I only ever remember things these days if I make a special effort to do so and I wasn’t on duty last night - even if I should have been in order to earn my Christmas present; for which many thanks and I really do not deserve it.
Jenny is the buyer and distributor of pressies and did her job with her usual kind words and charm. I do hope she bought herself something as a thank-you present for a job well done. I was overcome to receive another gift – this time for the CD cover design – even more undeserved than the one for Chief Blogetteer. What a lucky woman I am. What a lovely choir Rudsambee is and what fun it has been to keep you (lot) informed about its goings-on.
So – that’s it for this year. Happy Christmas every one.
Here’s to a stellar 2011 (gulp!) xx
xx
Friday, 10 December 2010
Oh Woe and Lack-a-day!
or – The Unveiling of the True Disposition and Intentions of the Erstwhile Angel
Jenny Fardell
Never was Blogetteer so deceived! You may remember my lyrical appreciation of the aforementioned Rudsambeeite in last week’s blog. She had the grace to e-mail her thanks for my kindness but having done so used the same communication to admit – and I quote:
(I even counted the number of ellipseses so you can be sure I have allowed you an entirely veracious glimpse into her dubious and disappointing character).
Now I have opened your eyes, as mine have been opened so cruelly, we move onto the second disappointment of the week: our concert at Rosslyn Chapel, long-awaited because for years we have been unable to get access to the place due to building work, has been summarily cancelled because of the weather and the subsequent safety issues. As the temperature inside has registered as low as -10 recently it has to be said that the decision to cancel is probably a fair one but this means we will have only one chance to show off all our hard Christmas-music training (hard music/hard work, both) which is a little gutting to say the least. (The likelihood is that our trip to Cranshaws will have to be called off too as the roads are impassable I believe, and thaw or no thaw, are unlikely to be much better by next weekend. I think we’re due more of the white icy stuff on Monday, too, which cannot be said to bode well for a venture into the Borders).
As a result of this (and the difficulty of negotiating the pavements and by-ways of Edinburgh) numbers were rather down at Wednesday’s rehearsal. Anne was stuck out in Balerno, Douglas in Biggar, Harriet in France. Yes, France and not of the ‘Little’ variety either. Real, true, militant, over-the-water France. Other missing persons were, presumably, tucked up safe and warm at home and who can blame them with the temperature dropping and the ice underfoot? We were rehearsing at Priestfield again in order to be at concert-readiness but there was considerably less to get through as the programme for St Giles is so much shorter than for Rosslyn. We had an added Alto as Sebastian had brought a friend along (sorry, missed her name – how hopeless am I? I don’t think I’ve ever been able to remember the name of a visiting stranger... perhaps if they were normal rather than strange... – Chris usually helps out by inserting the correct information [Heike was her name] before posting the blog. What would I do without him?). The lady in question is obviously a good sight-reader as she seemed to be singing along quite happily to most things. I am always enormously impressed by this sort of confidence and would like to have it. As well as the ability to retain information concerning people’s identity.
We sang through most of the material for Sunday’s concert, changed a couple of programmed items, improved quite a bit. Copies of the new CD were handed out, some of the Rosslyn ticket money refunded. Then it was back out into the slippery stuff and slippery it was indeed and so, on the way home, over I slipped! No damage to anything but my dignity – if ever I am to land on my bum you can be sure I will do it when there are lots of people about to witness the occurrence.
This was going to be a short pre-blog. It is a little longer than intended. Lucky you.
More after the concert: Sunday 12th, St Giles Cathedral, 6pm. Be there. Get a CD.
[p.s. Our humble blogstress is being overly humble as usual. The aforementioned CD, a flea in the ear features a cover designed by her fair self. Words, music and scribbles? How overtalented she is!]
Jenny Fardell
Never was Blogetteer so deceived! You may remember my lyrical appreciation of the aforementioned Rudsambeeite in last week’s blog. She had the grace to e-mail her thanks for my kindness but having done so used the same communication to admit – and I quote:
...Had you left your drink within my reach I would have glugged it down pretending I hadn’t realised. And I wouldn’t have been sorry... not one jot...
(I even counted the number of ellipseses so you can be sure I have allowed you an entirely veracious glimpse into her dubious and disappointing character).
Now I have opened your eyes, as mine have been opened so cruelly, we move onto the second disappointment of the week: our concert at Rosslyn Chapel, long-awaited because for years we have been unable to get access to the place due to building work, has been summarily cancelled because of the weather and the subsequent safety issues. As the temperature inside has registered as low as -10 recently it has to be said that the decision to cancel is probably a fair one but this means we will have only one chance to show off all our hard Christmas-music training (hard music/hard work, both) which is a little gutting to say the least. (The likelihood is that our trip to Cranshaws will have to be called off too as the roads are impassable I believe, and thaw or no thaw, are unlikely to be much better by next weekend. I think we’re due more of the white icy stuff on Monday, too, which cannot be said to bode well for a venture into the Borders).
As a result of this (and the difficulty of negotiating the pavements and by-ways of Edinburgh) numbers were rather down at Wednesday’s rehearsal. Anne was stuck out in Balerno, Douglas in Biggar, Harriet in France. Yes, France and not of the ‘Little’ variety either. Real, true, militant, over-the-water France. Other missing persons were, presumably, tucked up safe and warm at home and who can blame them with the temperature dropping and the ice underfoot? We were rehearsing at Priestfield again in order to be at concert-readiness but there was considerably less to get through as the programme for St Giles is so much shorter than for Rosslyn. We had an added Alto as Sebastian had brought a friend along (sorry, missed her name – how hopeless am I? I don’t think I’ve ever been able to remember the name of a visiting stranger... perhaps if they were normal rather than strange... – Chris usually helps out by inserting the correct information [Heike was her name] before posting the blog. What would I do without him?). The lady in question is obviously a good sight-reader as she seemed to be singing along quite happily to most things. I am always enormously impressed by this sort of confidence and would like to have it. As well as the ability to retain information concerning people’s identity.
We sang through most of the material for Sunday’s concert, changed a couple of programmed items, improved quite a bit. Copies of the new CD were handed out, some of the Rosslyn ticket money refunded. Then it was back out into the slippery stuff and slippery it was indeed and so, on the way home, over I slipped! No damage to anything but my dignity – if ever I am to land on my bum you can be sure I will do it when there are lots of people about to witness the occurrence.
This was going to be a short pre-blog. It is a little longer than intended. Lucky you.
More after the concert: Sunday 12th, St Giles Cathedral, 6pm. Be there. Get a CD.
[p.s. Our humble blogstress is being overly humble as usual. The aforementioned CD, a flea in the ear features a cover designed by her fair self. Words, music and scribbles? How overtalented she is!]
Friday, 3 December 2010
Brrrrr!
OK now, so enough’s enough, don’t you think? Very pretty and all that (actually, my garden’s gone beyond pretty, being just one huge mound of undisturbed snow with a twig or two poking out to remind me what is supposed to be out there) but now I’d like it to stop, thank you.
We were slightly down on numbers last night, as you may imagine, but all the altos made it – including Natalie1, returned from her lengthy travels – so we were in the majority for once and the sopranos looked very feeble. (Notice I don’t say ‘sounded’ - too libellous for words!) Anne managed to struggle in from Balerno although, as far as I can make out, she had to leave at dawn in order to arrive on time and was planning to bunker down with the Wexlers for the night rather than attempting to return home. That’s dedication beyond the call of duty for you but we can always rely on Anne for that as well as for being the best tuning-fork around. (Add to this the fact that she is willing to make litres of mulled apple juice for the warming of the multitudes at our Rosslyn concert and you will see that she is thoroughly indispensable).
John had the liquor cabinet open in an extremely generous and welcoming manner and was doling out snifters of whisky and sloe gin. I got a glass of the gin but unfortunately had to ask for it as he managed to miss me out whilst playing host/barman in a jolly ‘man the barricades’ blitz-y – but obviously rather haphazard - sort of fashion. Never one to hold back where alcohol is concerned I demanded attention (I did say ‘please’, honest) and am very glad I did as the sloe gin was delicious and just what was required post slippy-slidey walk in the very, very cold.
This general consuming of warming beverages led to the first amusing incident of the evening; one, I think, most people missed which is a shame because it illustrated beautifully the friendly spirit of the choir and the generosity of one member in particular: our Jen arrived a little late and, collecting a wee dram (if you can have a wee dram of sloe gin) on her way through the room, came to sit beside me. She was too late to hear me admitting that I’d picked up the wrong little black file on my way out of the house and so had none of the music I needed for the rehearsal but in time to hear me say, “Don’t worry, I’ll just share with Jenny, I’m sure she won’t mind.” What did the dear girl do but thrust her glass of the yummy stuff under my nose, quite happy for me to take a slug of her drink no questions asked or remonstrations made. I think I gave her a bit of an old-fashioned look; certainly I was a bit puzzled to begin with - but once I’d cottoned on (the length of time it took indicative of the fact that the same munificent gesture would never have occurred to me), I explained the situation and, naturally, we both dissolved into the first giggles of the evening. You may remember that last week I suggested we should endeavour to keep Mrs Fardell away from intoxicating liquids. Luckily she behaved much better this week and I may be able to rethink that recommendation. And how can anyone condemn such a friend to temperance?
Eventually – with much prompting from Anne who had it very much in mind that concerts are looming (she seemed to be the only one) – we were called to order by our lord and master and got down to work. This week we worked on Lullay and Ther is No Rose, Run, Toboggan, Run (oh dear), Deck the Hall, Nyathi Onyuol and Sleep. The girls had a little time later on to sing O Morganstern and Trees of the Field as well for the sake of those amongst us who have never sung them before and find them tricky. Funny how with half the people we get twice the work done...
Lullay is going to be lovely with gorgeous solos from Kay and Marie-Claire.
Ther is No Rose will no doubt be fine too though we were lacking our full compliment of double-trios and so just sang it all together.
Run, Toboggan, Run was a bit of a disaster until Ollie split us up and left the women to the tender mercies of Anne who is a task-master and a half and wouldn’t rest until the altos were singing in tune. I have to admit it sounds much better when we do. With a bit of tweaking and work on expression it ended up sounding a thousand times better. Let’s hope we don’t forget what got tweaked and why.
Deck the Hall is a laugh and a half. Remembering that there is only one hall proves to be a bit of a problem. Someone (a soprano) always puts an ‘s’ on and it is never the same person (soprano) twice. This one is guaranteed to make people smile. I think.
Nyathi Onyuol is getting there at last. I don’t know the words to this yet and really must make an effort to learn them as without the words the rhythm goes and thus befalls disaster.
Onto Sleep. And Eric Whitacre (yum). Susan had been busy handing out copies of this-and-that all evening (there’s always someone without something and usually several without lots). “Does anyone need Sleep?” she asked, all innocence, to cries of “Yes, I do” and “Can’t remember the last time I had any!" Much hilarity ensued (and Christopher gesturing at me to make sure I didn’t forget to remember to tell you). Once we’d settled we worked hard on this; so much so that I thought my voice (MY VOICE) might run off again. The sopranos got rather concerned on reaching the end that they were getting it wrong and so we concentrated on their problem for a while, poor Kay having to sing a very high section over and over again to make sure she’d got it right. It sounded fine – lovely, actually. It was only when I pointed out that Jenny and I had been singing entirely the wrong thing during these few bars (not looking at our music, as usual – complacent, or what?) that they realised they’d been right all along. Oops! And tee-hee. And sorry, Kay; hope there have been no ill-effects.
Once the singing was done some discussion took place as to whether or not the old people would need their carols on Sunday. The general opinion was not. They’d be mad to try and get out and about in this weather. Hips! Aaagh! Also someone - Chris or Kay? - asked if we had contingency plans in case Rosslyn had to be cancelled. We didn’t but now we do. A decision will be made on Thursday 9th and if we can’t go ahead as planned we will try to inform, directly, as many people as possible on Friday and a notice will be posted on the web-site as well. But it’ll be a bit of a, um, pain, won’t it? All go outside and breathe heavily and let’s see if we can melt the snow.
Now I have done my best to stay as up-beat as possible while writing this but I went out shopping today and bought a very nice shirt for my husband and then LOST IT. I went back to all the shops I’d been in and made enquiries but, nothing; so someone out there has got a very nice shirt for no money at all and I’m out of pocket when I had nothing in the pocket to start with. Grrrr. It’s time to go off and be grumpy for a couple of hours.
Christmas?
Humbug!
We were slightly down on numbers last night, as you may imagine, but all the altos made it – including Natalie1, returned from her lengthy travels – so we were in the majority for once and the sopranos looked very feeble. (Notice I don’t say ‘sounded’ - too libellous for words!) Anne managed to struggle in from Balerno although, as far as I can make out, she had to leave at dawn in order to arrive on time and was planning to bunker down with the Wexlers for the night rather than attempting to return home. That’s dedication beyond the call of duty for you but we can always rely on Anne for that as well as for being the best tuning-fork around. (Add to this the fact that she is willing to make litres of mulled apple juice for the warming of the multitudes at our Rosslyn concert and you will see that she is thoroughly indispensable).
John had the liquor cabinet open in an extremely generous and welcoming manner and was doling out snifters of whisky and sloe gin. I got a glass of the gin but unfortunately had to ask for it as he managed to miss me out whilst playing host/barman in a jolly ‘man the barricades’ blitz-y – but obviously rather haphazard - sort of fashion. Never one to hold back where alcohol is concerned I demanded attention (I did say ‘please’, honest) and am very glad I did as the sloe gin was delicious and just what was required post slippy-slidey walk in the very, very cold.
This general consuming of warming beverages led to the first amusing incident of the evening; one, I think, most people missed which is a shame because it illustrated beautifully the friendly spirit of the choir and the generosity of one member in particular: our Jen arrived a little late and, collecting a wee dram (if you can have a wee dram of sloe gin) on her way through the room, came to sit beside me. She was too late to hear me admitting that I’d picked up the wrong little black file on my way out of the house and so had none of the music I needed for the rehearsal but in time to hear me say, “Don’t worry, I’ll just share with Jenny, I’m sure she won’t mind.” What did the dear girl do but thrust her glass of the yummy stuff under my nose, quite happy for me to take a slug of her drink no questions asked or remonstrations made. I think I gave her a bit of an old-fashioned look; certainly I was a bit puzzled to begin with - but once I’d cottoned on (the length of time it took indicative of the fact that the same munificent gesture would never have occurred to me), I explained the situation and, naturally, we both dissolved into the first giggles of the evening. You may remember that last week I suggested we should endeavour to keep Mrs Fardell away from intoxicating liquids. Luckily she behaved much better this week and I may be able to rethink that recommendation. And how can anyone condemn such a friend to temperance?
Eventually – with much prompting from Anne who had it very much in mind that concerts are looming (she seemed to be the only one) – we were called to order by our lord and master and got down to work. This week we worked on Lullay and Ther is No Rose, Run, Toboggan, Run (oh dear), Deck the Hall, Nyathi Onyuol and Sleep. The girls had a little time later on to sing O Morganstern and Trees of the Field as well for the sake of those amongst us who have never sung them before and find them tricky. Funny how with half the people we get twice the work done...
Lullay is going to be lovely with gorgeous solos from Kay and Marie-Claire.
Ther is No Rose will no doubt be fine too though we were lacking our full compliment of double-trios and so just sang it all together.
Run, Toboggan, Run was a bit of a disaster until Ollie split us up and left the women to the tender mercies of Anne who is a task-master and a half and wouldn’t rest until the altos were singing in tune. I have to admit it sounds much better when we do. With a bit of tweaking and work on expression it ended up sounding a thousand times better. Let’s hope we don’t forget what got tweaked and why.
Deck the Hall is a laugh and a half. Remembering that there is only one hall proves to be a bit of a problem. Someone (a soprano) always puts an ‘s’ on and it is never the same person (soprano) twice. This one is guaranteed to make people smile. I think.
Nyathi Onyuol is getting there at last. I don’t know the words to this yet and really must make an effort to learn them as without the words the rhythm goes and thus befalls disaster.
Onto Sleep. And Eric Whitacre (yum). Susan had been busy handing out copies of this-and-that all evening (there’s always someone without something and usually several without lots). “Does anyone need Sleep?” she asked, all innocence, to cries of “Yes, I do” and “Can’t remember the last time I had any!" Much hilarity ensued (and Christopher gesturing at me to make sure I didn’t forget to remember to tell you). Once we’d settled we worked hard on this; so much so that I thought my voice (MY VOICE) might run off again. The sopranos got rather concerned on reaching the end that they were getting it wrong and so we concentrated on their problem for a while, poor Kay having to sing a very high section over and over again to make sure she’d got it right. It sounded fine – lovely, actually. It was only when I pointed out that Jenny and I had been singing entirely the wrong thing during these few bars (not looking at our music, as usual – complacent, or what?) that they realised they’d been right all along. Oops! And tee-hee. And sorry, Kay; hope there have been no ill-effects.
Once the singing was done some discussion took place as to whether or not the old people would need their carols on Sunday. The general opinion was not. They’d be mad to try and get out and about in this weather. Hips! Aaagh! Also someone - Chris or Kay? - asked if we had contingency plans in case Rosslyn had to be cancelled. We didn’t but now we do. A decision will be made on Thursday 9th and if we can’t go ahead as planned we will try to inform, directly, as many people as possible on Friday and a notice will be posted on the web-site as well. But it’ll be a bit of a, um, pain, won’t it? All go outside and breathe heavily and let’s see if we can melt the snow.
Now I have done my best to stay as up-beat as possible while writing this but I went out shopping today and bought a very nice shirt for my husband and then LOST IT. I went back to all the shops I’d been in and made enquiries but, nothing; so someone out there has got a very nice shirt for no money at all and I’m out of pocket when I had nothing in the pocket to start with. Grrrr. It’s time to go off and be grumpy for a couple of hours.
Christmas?
Humbug!
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