"Oh my lord, you're becoming Russian!"

Sorry for delay in posting. I seem to be overwhelmed with work at the moment. Not even played World of Warcraft!

Wednesday's rehearsal was good and bad. Good because it was my birthday, and Dr Liz (who's just started a new blog, btw - go check it out) brought me a balloon, which I tied to my chair :-) Then, at the end, Meg and Tom and Bruce sang "happy birthday" to me in beautiful harmony. Most impressive!

Also good was the fact that we finally got to see one of the things we're recording in 3 weeks' time - The Hills by John Ireland. And very lovely it is too.

Bad things included the fact that there was a very large number of people missing, and lots more were late. The weather was appalling, and international football traffic probably didn't help. (I spent the whole rehearsal feeling guilty that I hadn't checked the England venues recently - when I checked the football fixtures against the schedule last summer, I did check for international games too, but the venue for Wednesday night hadn't been confirmed, and I forgot to check more recently.)

I did hear a couple of people saying that they feel they hardly know The Bells at all, and we need lots more rehearsals than we have scheduled. But I disagree - IMHO there have been more than ample rehearsals, but unfortunately very few people have attended all of them. It's very frustrating to go over the same stuff again because a whole load of people have turned up that weren't there last time we did THE EXACT SAME STUFF. Argh. (I must admit I spent a large part of Wednesday's rehearsal admiring Jamie for keeping up such a positive attitude throughout, when inside he must surely have been incredibly annoyed at the whole "one step forward, two steps back" feeling.)

Other bad things - we spent the first half in sections, ladies and gentlemen separately, and for various reasons I invariably hate that. But at least it was only the first half. Oh, and when we sight-read The Hills, despite it being pretty straightforward, it still seemed as if the vast majority of people (certainly a lot of the ones near me) were waiting to listen for each note before singing it, so that it just draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagged. ARGH. You're in one of the best choirs in the country, people, why can't you take a chance?!? You're even encouraged to get it wrong! All the time!

Oh well. Must stop ranting. What did we actually do on Wednesday? Well, I was hopeful we might finally do the bit of the 3rd movement that we've still never done (p51 etc.) but we didn't get to that bit. We started at the end of the 3rd movement and worked backwards, but only got back to page 61. A few good Jamieisms though (including the one in the title):

"Wow, that's really wrong, isn't it?"

"Can each note be a suitcase that falls out of the hold?" (p71-2)

"D'you wanna do that with your right arm? It's great fun!" (this was after demonstrating the idea of going for the vowel on the "pile-up on the motorway" word, vzglyad, on p64. Bit visual - you probably had to be there...)

Oh, and not really a Jamieism, but it amused me - on p62 we were having trouble getting the note for "yes", and when it seemed as if we could do it, Jamie said "happy?" and we chorused... "Yes!" (OK, I'm easily amused. I admit it!)

A few final things. Naomi told us about the Halifax Choral Society performance of Gerontius with the Hallé on 13th November, for which they are asking for volunteer extra singers (see Liz A if interested). Naomi added: "This will be a no-sash occasion!"

Barbara gave me a CD that has Shostakovich 2 on it so I could put it online. I haven't quite enough web storage space to do that yet, but when I take down The Bells I will.

Graham E writes about the Mellor concert here (you may need to scroll down to his comment).

And finally - I was talking to the three new altos, who all seem to be still having fun, and Lisa commented on how very much she'd enjoyed her first individual session with Maggie. So, yay!