"Find your own monkey!"

This was not a Jamieism, but a Maggieism. (When we did the Funky Gibbon exercise - the monkey noises - she demonstrated, and the whole choir did it at the same pitch she had, hence her request!)

The problem with being lazy (and not getting round to doing a choir blog post until a couple of days after the rehearsal) is that I can't remember what all the Jamieisms referred to. For example, "I love your buckets! Soft, but with a monkey underneath!" ... I think the buckets were buckets of cold water that we were supposed to be throwing, but I forget what the effect was supposed to be. The monkey is the one previously referred to, though :p

Then there was "Can you sing with horns? C# hornèd people! Sharper horns! Scary horns!" This definitely involved Jamie with imaginary antlers growing out of his head, as opposed to imaginary pigtails (it was a bit visual...) And at some point I wrote down "Pete impression!!!" I know this refers to Pete from Big Brother, and that Jamie reminded me of him at one point (which is kind of freaky, if you know who Pete is), but not why!

It was a really, really, really long rehearsal, by the way. (Just wanted to point that out to those who weren't there.) It was the last one of the season, of course, and there was a social thingy planned for afterwards, and Jamie had been asked (and agreed) to finish early to accommodate this. But what he didn't mention at the start (or indeed at any stage) was that in his mind, finishing early also implied transferring the break from the middle to the end. So we went from 6.45 to 8.45 with no break, on one of the hottest evenings EVER. And we only realised gradually, when he started a new movement at 8.10, that he had no intention of having a break. Of course, Jamie, being Jamie, was just as full of energy at the end as at the start (and he stood up throughout), but the rest of us were like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of the Wizard of Oz. ("I'm melting, I'm melting!") I understand the need to not lose any rehearsal time, Jamie, but I think you need to take psychology into account at times. We did get through every note of the Ravel, lots of them several times (and still no Beethoven, despite many requests), but by the end most people had switched off, and even those who did write stuff down as instructed probably won't remember everything we did on Wednesday. Oh well. It did sound pretty good though!

I forgot to mention the start of the rehearsal, where Maggie did an exercise that turned into "Summer Holiday" (as usual it took me AGES to recognise this) and once we all got singing we couldn't stop, and Jamie ran in and thumped out the piano part. A nice start :-) Oh, and blond Jonathan! He definitely looked much blonder than he did last week. Or was it just me that thought that?

Going back to Beethoven 9 just before I finish, a couple of things. Someone asked recently whether I could put an mp3 of it online, and I pointed out that I did so a month ago, when I posted all the famous choruses. But to save you all looking back, here's the link again. And today I've added a text file of the lyrics, for those who know the tunes but need to brush up on the words.

Nearer the time, I must write about some interesting Beethoven 9 analyses. There are some fascinating musical details that I bet you've never noticed even if you've sung the work loads of times (I hadn't noticed any of them before I learned about them in an OU course I did). There's also a very well-respected academic who has a whole theory about B9 viewed in feminist terms. And then there's the theory about how it's all based on stuff to do with horses.... (yes, Mary, I did save that email!)