"Your tongue should be almost bursting with excitement!"

"Well, Jamie's on form tonight, isn't he?" said someone in the tea queue tonight. And he was. I forget what the title quote was about, but it was one of the double-consonant Italian words (I suspect "neggiamo"). There was also the reverse um-cha thing, which produced a sentence that was something like "you expect to come in on an um but you actually come in on a cha - but it FEELS like an um. You know, like speaking French with a Spanish accent". Seemed perfectly clear to me, but since it was the sops who actually needed to follow this instruction, more help was needed, so Jamie got the whole choir to chant "1, 2, 1, 2" till they managed to come in correctly :p

There was also the demonstration of how to sing a D so that lots of high harmonics are audible. This was very impressive, although we were a little disappointed that he stopped after the A and the high F sharp! (If you didn't hear this, it's much too hard to explain what he was actually doing. But trust me, it was very clever.)

Oh, and there was something about how to make a pirate's "arr" noise, but people were talking behind me (I *hate* it when they do that - it was particularly bad throughout the choir tonight, presumably because people hadn't seen each other for almost 2 weeks) so I didn't quite catch whether you do it by pushing your larynx or *not* pushing your larynx. The former, I think, whereas the latter is what's usually required for singing. I think.

BTW, I would very much like to get a photo of the look on Jamie's face when he demonstrated how he wanted us to sing "beviam, beviam, beviam" - "Look dangerous!" he said, and he did. Although I'm not sure why, when the words mean "we drink, we drink, we drink!"

Two slightly unrelated things he mentioned - firstly that he'd heard from the recording engineer for the Elgar, who told him that he was so moved while listening to one of the choir bits that he'd burst into tears! Should be worth listening to... And also, Jamie says he is taking part in tomorrow night's Brand New Flashmob Opera... but he didn't say in what capacity (I presume singing). Apparently at the climax the chorus have to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in order to save the heroine from going to hell. In the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. The mind boggles!

There were three new members who joined the choir tonight, and I had one of them (Jane) next to me, which was nice, particularly as her brother is an old friend of mine. But I felt really sorry for her - she joins the choir as a 2nd alto, and the very first thing she has to sing is the bit of Cav where we're singing the soprano part, which goes up to a top A flat! Oh well, it will only get easier :-)