"If someone has to move their tongue, so be it!"

... said Jamie tonight, when trying to get the altos to all produce the same vowel sound on the "ma-" of "music makers". Ten minutes later, when he'd managed to not only do that but also get the tenors, basses and finally the sopranos to copy it, he was delighted with the result. I think it was at that point that he grinned widely and said "it's like having a new toy to play with!" Then he pointed out "That's ONE NOTE." Our planned perfect recording could be a while away at this rate :p

No more Tippett - just Elgar and Mascagni tonight (with a seating change in between the two because the ladies and the gentlemen are both divided into three equal parts for most of the Mascagni, so seating the sops and altos separately doesn't really make sense). Oh, and we sang Happy Birthday to Naomi :-) We finally did the end bit of The Music Makers, which I was pleased about because I'd only done it once, the first day we sight read it (the one rehearsal I missed, to go and see United, was the one when they did lots of work on that bit). Most of the time on the Mascagni was spent clarifying who's singing which part and when, but we did have a quick go at the bit from "a casa" to the end, mainly concentrating on the Italian. Much hilarity when everyone realised what "la giostra" sounds like if you pronounce it correctly... not helped by a tenor muttering something about "thinking outside the box" :p

We finished by singing once through the end of the Easter Hymn, but not before Jamie had said some lovely things about Saturday's gig. There are also some good reviews - 5 stars from both the Times and the Guardian, although the latter didn't actually mention the choir! The Manchester Evening News only gave 3 stars, but gets brownie points for being the only one to mention the Spirituals (which I think they liked!) Pity it looks as though the radio broadcast won't include them, according to the new Radio Times at least. Hopefully the BBC will keep them in reserve to broadcast another time, because we're pretty sure they did record them - there were mics for the soloists, and they weren't in anything else, you see.

Oh, and tonight's rehearsal was a bit of an eventful one for me for non-singing reasons; I'd been volunteered, along with Ken, to report back to the choir on a recent meeting the committee had with some Hallé management types. First time I'd spoken to the whole choir, as far as I can remember. It seemed to go fairly well, and lots of people came up to me afterwards to congratulate me for explaining things clearly, which was nice of them - it seems that there is some other use for skills learned teaching in a special school :-)