A scene of endless sin and pleasure, eh? Looking forward to seeing the music for THAT!

I'm supposed to be writing an essay that's now two weeks late, so of course I'm procrastinating. Decided I needed to blog as there are at least 3 things from Thursday's gig I realised I forgot to mention. But first... I just updated the forthcoming concerts page. And I don't know why it never occurred to me before (another CRAFT moment, probably!) but I've now added links to the official Hallé pages for those concerts. That means that not only can people easily see who the soloists are and what else is on the programme, but they can buy tickets online! Honestly, the Hallé should pay me commission :p

Discovered, while looking up said links, that the Wagner concert may be more interesting than I'd expected. I'm not a Wagner fan generally - I may have just been unlucky with what I've sung, but I've found all the Wagner I've sung so far to be extremely boring (plus, it seems to give me a sore throat!) Well, in May the ladies are singing part of Tannhäuser. We haven't been told which part - but according to the Hallé page, the only bits they're doing are "Tannhäuser's glorious Overture and the Venusberg, a scene of endless sin and pleasure". And since generally the chorus doesn't sing in overtures... 

Another web-related point of interest: I discovered that if you google "2nd altos", this blog is now the top result! (It's only in 2nd place if you miss the quotes out, but since it was 3rd last week, I imagine there may be yet another change...) Oh, and in case anyone's wondered where the title came from, it was the name of our CHAMPION 2nd alto quiz team (Gill, Chris, Liz, Alison and me) from the choir Christmas social. (We very kindly allowed Alison to join us, even though she's just been banished to 1st alto, since she sang 2nd for so many years :-) Which reminds me: I heard, quite some time later, that apparently one of the other teams - the one with lots of tenors, I believe - complained that we cheated! The cheek! Well, there were several teams I saw cheating, but I can promise you we weren't one of them. We didn't need to :p

Anyway, before I forget AGAIN, four things left over from Thursday night. (Yes, I just thought of another one!) Firstly, those of you who like the Jamieisms may have been disappointed that I didn't include any. So here are three: 1. Much giggling (mainly from the altos, I admit) at the poor guy trying to get page 30 perfect - the lyrics there are "or one that is coming to birth". Well, he discussed "the depth of tone on your come" and advised us to "get quicker to the birth and enjoy it". I suppose "you need a lot more tone on the bottom" is harmless in itself, but by that stage everything was funny :p

2. While warming up, doing the rolling-the-shoulder exercise: "Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep them shoulders rolling. Keep them shoulders rolling, Rahh-ahh-ahh-ahh Hide, I think you'll find the vowel is!"

3. Still while warming up, but I forget the context: "More blood on the floor! You know, that sort of thing! Tap the sweat from it at the end of the performance! The Cream of Manchester!" (I was reminded of this one while watching a Friends episode yesterday, in which they mentioned Boddingtons beer. Amazing.)

And finally, one great bit from the concert itself that I forgot to mention was how fantastic it feels when the orchestra applaud us. They applaud everyone who performs with them, of course - it's be rude not to - but often when we sing with them they turn and smile at us too, and on Thursday night I swear a couple of them cheered! Great feeling :-)

Tonight is the first of three long recording sessions for The Music Makers. Top tip to people who haven't done a recording session before: BRING A BOOK :p