"Use me! Abuse me!"

Well, I was up till half past five this morning finishing the oft-mentioned Joseph backing tracks - long story why, but they're finally all done! Very much looking forward to going to sleep in a minute, but I thought I may as well offload tonight's choir thoughts while I'm eating. (I was talking to a tenor called Simon whose name I didn't know till tonight, and he told me he reads my blog and finds it useful for finding out what he missed when he was absent. When people say things like that to me, it always inspires me to write stuff when I'm extra-tired!)

Again, we got a lot done. Jamie got very excited several times (yes, even more so than usual!) This prompted Judy to mutter "Somebody hose him down!", which was going to be the title of my post until Jamie came out with the instruction above :p (In case you're wondering, the "use me" refers to the fact that not enough people are watching. The "abuse me"... well, I'm not sure I want to know!)

We started with Christe qui lux es et dies, which we hadn't tried before, and I can't say I like it. It seems extremely boring. Maybe Jamie has some plan in mind to make it exciting, but I can't imagine what. Oh well. We spent a lot of time on it, but this time did include two amusing impressions from Jamie - one of Bart Simpson (this was illustrating how to sing "Domine" with an American vowel sound, but not TOO American) and one of him "reining in a horse that's just woken up, but you really would like to leave quite soon, so you need to get him to move" (this was to assist with breathing control).

We then had a quick run through Laudibus in Sanctis. Not bad, although it was frustrating that it was nowhere near as good as in the sectional. This was mainly because all the people who (presumably) missed the sectional, and therefore didn't know the music very well, were dragging behind the whole time. Argh! The most amusing part of this bit of the rehearsal, though, was related to this. Jamie conducted the second half of the piece with no score, and the deal was that he would only bring people in if they waved to him just beforehand to alert him to the fact they were about to sing. I'd love to have seen it - he said it was hilarious to see how eager people looked when waving!

A new piece next, Psalm 67, composed by Jamie himself. He spent quite a while explaining why the piece had been written the way it had, which was interesting (I love to get background info!). It has some lovely harmonies already; I look forward to hearing it when everyone is singing the right notes :p

Oh, and there was a long-awaited acknowledgement of 2nd alto greatness from Jamie! There was giggling, you see, when he asked us to pronounce "us" with an "ar" at the start...

Jamie: "It's always the altos!"
2nd altos: *glare*
Jamie: "It's always the 1st altos! 2nd altos - YES!"

Then followed a page of Lord, Thou hast been our refuge, which was similar in many ways to Jamie's piece. This was what produced the "Use me! Abuse me!" plea... There was also a bit of a thing about descending minor 3rds (hint to sopranos: if Jamie asks "what interval is that?" you are usually safe to guess "descending minor 3rd"....) in which he suggested that a member of the committee might go through all the repertoire and produce a guide to where this interval appears... I hope he was joking - you can never be too sure!

We finished with God is gone up, which was fun as ever, but slightly annoying because now I'll have it on the brain for the 2nd week running! In the car on the way home we heard most of The Music Makers on Classic FM. We spent the whole journey trying to decide whether or not it was our recording that they were playing. We decided eventually that it wasn't - but it turned out it was! Which reminds me, there's a brief review of that CD here that I hadn't seen before (thanks Graham).

Oh, and finally, just wanted to mention that on Saturday I sang tenor in a gig in Doncaster for Ken's Nightingale Singers. It was fun, but the highlight for me was a semi-improvised version of Czardas by a fabulous violinist called Daniel Axworthy. I was sitting next to him for most of the gig - he was singing tenor as well as playing a couple of violin bits - and he seemed like a great guy. But when I got home I googled him and found that he was the violinist in the arm-wrestling story, which I vaguely remember reading at the time. But if you ever get a chance to hear him play, do :-)