"But, Jamie, what happened to the little bird with the broken wing?"

Seems like ages since last week's gig. Tonight was back to normal. Much praise and thanks from Jamie though, and apparently we made nearly £50,000. And, it seems, the BBC Phil were impressed :-)

We started with The Music Makers. Seems like ages since I sang it, due to going to the match last week. It's sounding pretty good. Progress was made on page 62, where the basses are now singing in the same key as everyone else :p I was also reminded that I meant to listen to my other Elgar recordings - I want to hear which bits are quoted. (Jamie pointed out the bit on page 69 that's the big tune from the 1st Symphony. I didn't think I'd heard the 1st Symphony, but that tune is very familiar, so maybe I have. And that reminded me that I've not heard the 2nd Symphony for years - I studied it in depth on an OU music course, and have played it, but I don't think I've heard it since.)

At the end of page 69 I appear to have written "WORD!", which amuses me each time we get to that point. It's actually shorthand for "think about the placement of the vowel sound while singing this word, and at the same time sing it as if you're DOING it" (the word is "cry"). But still. As for page 78 to the end, I think I've only sung it once, and that was ages ago. Apparently they spent a lot of time on it last week, so I've had a look through to check I can sing it, and transferred markings. Not too hard, but I hope we do it soon.

We did the Spirituals. Well, three of them. And guess what? The BFBABTEIGW? Everyone's still getting it wrong. Ditto for Nobody Knows. And we STILL didn't do Go Down Moses!

Oh, but I nearly forgot - we did do one thing that we'd been expecting to do long before now. The "other" Tippett, i.e. the Ritual Dances. The concert's on 26th February, yet this is the first time we looked at it. (I sang through it with the CD when I got home from work today, just in case today was the day - it's not too hard, and there's hardly any of it.) Jamie introduced it, though, by telling us the story of the opera they're taken from ("The Midsummer Marriage"). He's very good at this - one of the best rehearsals EVER was the one a couple of years ago when he introduced Iolanthe to us. That was also a good rehearsal because he managed to create an amazing new sound during the warm-up - one that still had everyone talking about it after the rehearsal, several hours later - but it's not often I've laughed as hard as I did during Jamie's telling of the Iolanthe story :p

Well, tonight it went something like this...

JAMIE: There's a hare being chased by a fox.

CHOIR: Awww!

JAMIE: But the hare gets away!

CHOIR: Hurray!

JAMIE: And then there's a fish being chased by an otter.

CHOIR: Awww!

JAMIE: And the fish gets slightly injured.

CHOIR: *outraged*

JAMIE: But it gets away!

CHOIR: Hurray! Hurray!

JAMIE: And then there's a little bird with a broken wing.

CHOIR: Awwwwwwwwwwwww!

JAMIE: And it gets chased by a hawk!

CHOIR: *beside themselves with worry*

JAMIE: But at that point the story suddenly switches to another part.

[cut: further explanation of story, plus an hour's rehearsal of the music]

JAMIE: So. Let's leave that piece for tonight. Any questions?

CHOIR: What happened to the little bird with the broken wing?