Great choral moments, part 1

As promised!

This isn't the first one I thought of when I said I'd start this series of posts, but I was just reminded of it so thought I'd post it while it was in my mind. Plus, I already wrote about it elsewhere at the time, so I can put it here with a quick copy & paste :p

Last November (the date is significant, as you'll see later if you consider it) we had a really good Hallé gig - Beethoven 7, Beethoven "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage" (no, I'd never heard of the Beethoven version either) and some Mahler songs (from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn"). Since the choir was only in the second item, we got to sit and listen for most of the time, and the symphony was fantastic. But even that wasn't the great moment.

It was in the warm up. We warm up very intensively, for at least 20 minutes before we sing, and Jamie (the choral director) likes to vary his approach (although it always involves stretching the body and face, followed by breathing exercises, followed by pitchless vocal exercises, followed by pitched vocal exercises). One that he uses quite often is the "sing a chord" one, because most of the choir find this extremely difficult (which always surprises me). So no-one batted an eyelid when on Saturday he suddenly interrupted our "sliding V" exercise to say "Sing a G major chord." Followed by "C major. G. D. G. C. G. D. G." (A few people were looking relieved that he was sticking to such an easy chord progression for a change.)

I'm still annoyed I didn't catch on before this, but: Jamie then said "Now add the tune!" and suddenly the whole choir of 150, crammed into our backstage warmup area, were singing a harmonised-on-the-fly a cappella version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". With only a few shouted instructions from Jamie, we modulated a couple of times, ending in a key which allowed the 1st sopranos to show off on the last note. And with that the warm up ended, and we went on stage to perform.

It's always a fantastic feeling singing in the middle of a really good choir - but this was extra special. Everyone was just buzzing - the whole choir went on stage with huge grins on their faces. (The concert was almost an anti-climax!) It's really hard to convey what this felt like to someone who's not experienced anything similar. But it was good :-)