Highs of life, and lows of pitch

David-the-pianist, our rehearsal accompanist, is used to maintaining an Olympic calm in the face of hideous flatness. Only his eyebrows give away his inner angst, knitting themselves into interesting patterns as we wander through the lesser known parts of the harmonic series. And most of the time a gentle hint from the direction of the piano is enough for us to get back in tune. But at this weeks’ rehearsal the eyebrows were working overtime, as we sang Whitacre’s “When David Heard” resolutely, resoundingly flat. It must be the only piece in our repertoire where we resist the help of the piano and just get flatter. I don’t know whether to blame the continual repeated notes or the odd unexpected leaps more, but the whole piece is like an academic exercise in how to make a choir drop pitch. Luckily this is the third time I’ve done the piece with Oriana, and I know from experience that come the concert it will be an absolute show-stopper. In fact I urge you to get your tickets for our Southwark Cathedral concert now because it will be glorious. But getting through the Strangled Cat Chorus stage of rehearsal is always a bumpy ride!

Happily we only had time for an initial sing-through last night, because we were short on time due to the choir’s annual AGM. We all did our best to look intelligent and knowledgeable through the discussion of audits and accounts, and then patted ourselves on the back as we looked back on the last year with pride. What a year it’s been - concerts in the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Abbey Road studios and even the 02 Arena! And there’s lots more great things coming up. Our end of season concert at Southwark Cathedral is going to be fantastic, and before that we’re going on tour to Madrid, and doing a charity concert at Hampton Court in aid of Marie Curie and the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation. So last night was a very satisfying recap of choir activities. In fact the only big concern was highlighted by David-the-Conductor, who pointed out that we haven’t been socialising enough at the choir’s favoured three Cs social events – there hasn’t been a ceilidh, curry night or cabaret for ages. To redress the balance, I feel we should attempt every social event we can think of beginning with C. I would like to suggest a night of Crotcheting, with Coffee and Crudités served as refreshment. Camping and Caravanning went down well as options in the pub last night. We also decided on Curling, a Cheese and Cider evening, and a full day of Clarkson-baiting (standing outside Jeremy Clarkson’s house making nasty comments about his cars). Hopefully some of the choir will begin Courting, (and choir couples Colin and Carol, and Cat and Cen, deserve an accolade for setting such a fine thematic example). And I suppose, if we get a bit of extra time, we might indulge in the occasional bit of Choral singing.