"No, no, no - you need some sort of ecstasy, surely?"

Sorry, etc., etc.! (After the next three weeks I will have much more free time and promise to update more often!)

I missed choir last week (i.e. 11 days ago) because I'd been up working for most of the previous night, so by the time I'd been to work as well, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I was almost as tired this week, but I was determined not to miss another rehearsal, and I'm so glad I made it, because it put me in the best mood I've been in for ages. I sat next to Soprano Claire, and we had a whale of a time - we were just buzzing at the end!

I'd got there early for the alto vocal coaching, in which we sang bits of The Music Makers, including singing the last page to each other with our fingers in our ears (a REALLY weird sensation - try it!). Then, in the main rehearsal, we moved onto Bach, with (again) most of the time being spent on the chorale at the end. That produced all this week's Jamieisms: the one in the title, plus "An eternal frisbee right next to God" (I can't remember what that meant!) and "Ladies, can I check your underlay?" (which made us all giggle, which (probably quite rightly) seemed to really irritate Jamie, but it's because we were in a good mood!)

We then sight-read Syvati, which is very lovely although goes on a bit too long. Can't wait to do it with the solo cello. (And the basses sounded magnificent.) And we finished by sight-reading, with very few stops, the whole of the Poulenc Gloria, which we're performing in May. This gave the lovely Jonathan (our pianist for the night) something to do at last. (I see he's updated his website, by the way, but be warned - bits of it crashed my computer!) I've never sung this before, and I really like it - I've just bought the CD (mp3s below). I made loads of mistakes, so Jamie should be very happy. (In my defence, the score is very hard to read, which always seems to be the case with French music for some reason - does anyone know why that is?)

I bought a CD of The Kingdom along with the Poulenc, by the way, and I listened to that yesterday. I've never heard the piece before, and I can't say it grabs me. Mind you, it doesn't help that the choir on the recording is a bit flat in places and I can't make out most of their words. Maybe the piece will inspire me more when we do it properly!

Anyway, two rehearsals for everyone this week, although not all at the same time. I must go and do some work. But first....

Some Poulenc Gloria mp3s:

Poulenc Gloria: Gloria
Poulenc Gloria: Laudamus te
Poulenc Gloria: Domine Deus
Poulenc Gloria: Domine fili unigenite
Poulenc Gloria: Domine Deus, Agnus Dei
Poulenc Gloria: Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris

And, finally, some random links I've accumulated...

You may have heard about this alarm clock, which wakes you up with soothing messages from Stephen Fry. Sadly all the messages are addressed to "sir", but I believe there is a "madam" version coming soon.

I'm sure you were all dying to know how to do harsh death metal vocals. Now you can!

Here's a recent BBC article about why boys don't join choirs.

I recently discovered A Singer's Life - a blog which has a huge amount of interesting stuff on it. I've added it to the sidebar, along with Choralation. Most interesting recent post on the latter was this one about how conductors are largely superfluous. Food for thought!

Oh, and if you're reading this on Sunday, don't forget our Question Time opera is on BBC2 tonight at 10pm :-)