"I might look stupid, but at least I'm in tune!"

Firstly, before I forget, someone mentioned the ladies' choir a cappella version of I Predict a Riot to me earlier, so I thought I'd repeat the link to it, since the Kaiser Chiefs won the top prize at the Brit Awards tonight. (I first mentioned this mp3 on 13th January...)

Anyway, SUCH a fun rehearsal tonight! We sight-read through lots of new stuff for the a cappella concert, and it was all very wonderful. Also, we sat in 2 choirs (i.e. 1st altos on the opposit side of the room to 2nd altos) and I love it when we sit like that, especially when there's antiphonal stuff like in Belshazzar. There wasn't any antiphonal stuff tonight, but it was still good. Also the talking was practically nil, at least near me...

New stuff we sang tonight: Tallis - Salvator mundi; Tallis - O nata lux de lumine; Byrd - Laudibus in Sanctis; Vaughan Williams - Lord Thou hast been our refuge. The Byrd is, I presume, the fast funky motet previously referred to. The Vaughan Williams is the piece with the semi-chorus (for which it appears just about the whole choir is voluntarily auditioning.... I guess that's a positive sign!). All the pieces have really nice low alto parts (the first Tallis one had the 1st altos significantly lower than the 2nds in many places, which is a bit odd) but none of them was all that hard, except the Byrd, which was interestingly tricky! Lots of people were having a proper go at the sight reading, which is great - a few years ago, most of the choir would not even have attempted to sight-read something that hard, but tonight only a few sat there listening rather than give it a go.

Maggie started the evening off (well, after the 2nd alto vocal coaching session, which was very useful) by saying "I'm going to open your vowels over the next few weeks!" Some of the tenors misheard her and were a bit alarmed... Then, "Good evening", said Jamie, and promptly broke his music stand :p He was on good form after that though. Some samples:

"Elgar, with a Salvador Dali twist!" (this referred to an imaginary moustache)

"OK, I'll conduct like this now..." (at which he crossed his arms and conducted with them the wrong way round)

"Imagine a baby's bib... what's on yours? spaghetti? mine too! ... now throw the pizza across the restaurant..."

Bit of a visual one - his impressions of the faces of the tenors, when he was illustrating how he can tell from their facial expressions whether or not they're resonating...

"I don't know what sort of horses you hang out with!" (to the 2nd altos, after some instruction involving ambling to the starting box rather than racing to the finishing line... i.e. relax...)

"I can hear all your voices individually!" he said, after listening to the 1st altos. He then (somewhat offputtingly, given that comment) came to stand in front of the 2nd altos to listen. "You sound completely different! In 7 weeks, you'll all sound the same." We weren't at all sure whether he meant "different" in a good or a bad way, but a few minutes later he told the 1sts they sounded much better that time, and he didn't say anything to us. I'm inferring from that that we were great the first time :-)