Oh the horror – not content with our last two weeks of audio recording, this week someone foisted a video camera on me and asked me to take some footage of the rehearsal. Why do people choose me for these things? I can’t work anything invented after about 1750, and even if I could I have all the visual acuity and artistic flair of a toaster. I think I got some good footage of the floor, my left leg, an extreme close-up of Emma sitting next to me, the inside of the lens cap. And when I finally managed to point the camera at something a reasonable distance away I’d been filming for about 10 minutes before I realised I hadn’t pressed “record”. For heaven’s sake.
Anyway, the reason we were attempting to record some of the rehearsal was because the choir was joined by some mystery guests. Any good blog should have an air of intrigue about it, so the identity of our guests (and indeed the titles of the pieces) shall not be revealed at this time! But the choir were very excited to be singing with a genuine rock legend, accompanied on drums and the hurdy gurdy. And there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. Of course we regularly sing with classical soloists, but singing more popular styles of music with soloists brings a very different set of challenges, as the music tends to be more flexible and open to improvisation. So we have to stay together as a choir but also flex to fit in with the singer’s interpretation of the song. Happily David-the-conductor is practiced at managing this transition, and he wheeled us through the sticky patches with aplomb.
We started by challenging our mystery rock legend to an acoustic sing-off of Mystery Piece Number One, although as there was only 1 of him and 80 of us, the choir had a slight edge. But after a quick game of Hunt the Microphone the balance was redressed, and we began to work together well. We spent most of the rehearsal working on “Mystery Piece Number One” and “Mystery Piece Number 2” – which took us through realms of bluesy folky chorally poppy rocky bluegrassy spiritually celticy fusion type music. It was all a long way away from last week’s 20th century mass settings, but by the end of the rehearsal we were making a fantastic sound and blending effortlessly. We left on a high, congratulating ourselves on our versatility. This is going to be a really exciting season for performances!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment