Week 5 - A guest and some steering

Our rehearsal this week was again enlivened by a guest – Beth Nielsen Chapman popped in to run through some songs ready for the Sound and Vision event on February 25th. We’ve worked with Beth before – in fact my very first Oriana concert was a charity concert with Beth in St Pauls Cathedral, which was an amazing event. So we’re excited to have the opportunity to work with her again, and try some new material. It was possibly a bit dull for our normal accompanist though, who was ousted from his seat at the piano by Beth. But he still contributed to proceedings by reading the paper in a very musical way.

As there’s still an embargo on mentioning the music, I decided to attend my first ever steering group meeting this week to give me something else to write about. Organising the choir in terms of concerts, venues, rehearsals, finances, subscriptions, tours, marketing etc takes a lot of work and decision-making behind the scenes, but the choir is very egalitarian and anyone can go along to a steering group meeting and put in their opinion. I would love to say I was a valuable asset to the meeting, but actually I just got steadily drunker on the wine and all stroppy about David-the-conductor nicking my chocolate fingers. (He was taking them off my PLATE! Honestly!) Item 4 on the agenda was an item about PR, and someone carelessly mentioned that effective PR depended on being sure we knew the direction the choir wished to go in. There was a collective indrawn breath, and some people may have turned ashen with terror. One longstanding member of the committee pointed out that whenever this gets mentioned there are more opinions than attendees. And sure enough, two hours later we were still arguing and the wine was almost gone. At this point I had to leave to get my train, so I’m still not sure what direction the choir is going in. But hopefully it’s going there in less of a zigzag than my walk back to the tube station. In any case, I have developed a new respect bordering on awe for the people who have to make those decisions and try and keep everyone happy. Blimey.