London Oriana becomes London Owliana at the BBC Electric Proms

How can I possibly do justice to our appearance with Robert Plant and the Band of Joy at the Electric Proms last night? It was brill! They were fantastic and it was a privilege to be able to join them for a couple of numbers in the encore. The culmination of a pretty hectic week of rehearsals almost every night, artistic tension, laughter, tears, and a really rather nice fish pie in the BBC canteen.

The tension mostly derived from some last minute cuts to what we were doing. David-the-Conductor had as usual put together an impressive and ambitious arrangement of three pieces that we’d been asked to look at – Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down, Twelve Gates to the City, and I Bid You Goodnight. But in rehearsals on Thursday with the band, it was decided that Satan had to come in the main set rather than the encore, and we would pretty much have had to do a synchronised pole vault on and off the stage in order to join in. So regretfully our accompanying parts to Satan had to be dropped, which was a real shame. In addition, once we’d run through the other two, the feeling was that some of the words the choir was singing were clashing a little bit with the band’s lyrics, so we also had to drop a few bars here and there, and also some lyrics in favour of oooohs and ahhhhs. Now, you might think we couldn’t get the lyrics wrong with oooohs and ahhhhhhhs, but let me tell you, you’d be wrong! There were many occasions when half the choir was ooohing while the other half was ahhhing, and we’d all grown so used to coming in strongly with “Twelve gates!” that every single one of us ended up singing “Tw-ooooooh” at least once. It was like the Owl Chorus. There was also the added complication that some bars were dropped or truncated, so we were suddenly coming in on different notes to what we’d learned. And on top of all that, we found at sound-check on Friday that we were all individually miked, and standing further apart between rows than we were expecting. So we couldn’t hear much of ourselves, the rest of the choir or even the band, and we were picking up the pitch once it had resounded off the walls, which is not the most reliable way to stay in tune. The soundcheck was therefore a little tense. “Aaaaa—oooooooh”, sang Emma next to me, a minor third too high. “Tw-ooooo” I warbled back at her, at least a semitone flat. We exchanged panicked glances while David-the-Conductor glowered and Robert Plant somehow managed to maintain a zen-like calm. It was not a high point of our day.

This could have been upsetting for a lesser choir, but happily we are the Oriana, and if there’s one thing we’re used to, it’s pulling off a performance when we’re not completely familiar with the pieces! At least I remembered rehearsing these numbers, and I haven’t always been able to say that in a concert. So we maintained our equanimity with some hastily planned semaphore signals on the part of David-the-Conductor so that we knew when to ooooh and when to ahhhhh. And of course, once the concert had kicked off and we heard how amazing Robert and the band were sounding, we were riding high on adrenalin and bopping like teenagers in the wings. Come the encore we filed on to a cheerful and raucous crowd who were clearly really enjoying themselves and welcomed us with warmth and appreciation. We had a lot to live up to, but I feel like we did the band credit. We ran through Twelve Gates first, and our inner backing singers burst through, oooohing and aaaahing like we’d been born to it. Not a tw-ooooooo in sight. And then came I Bid You Goodnight, in a stunning a capella arrangement. The Band of Joy sang first, and then we joined in with some gorgeous harmonies. It felt sublime, and by the reaction we had from the crowd, it sounded as stunning as it felt. It was a truly amazing experience, and I really hope we’ll get to sing with Robert again soon. And as an added bonus, a few of us walked into Jo Wiley in the corridor afterwards, and she said the performance was something special – praise indeed from someone that hears an awful lot of music.

So in the spirit of last night’s concert, I’m going to write the rest of the blog without words.

Ooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaaaah
Tw-oooooooooooo
Good night!