If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy

I've had a bit of a mixed week in which some good things have happened, but far more things have not gone according to plan. I spent far too much time chasing a certain organisation to get them to pay me for some freelance work I did for them. I was desperate to get this money by Friday so I could pay this month's mortgage, but it was not to be. They do say they're GOING to pay me, but don't seem in any hurry to actually do so! Argh!

Choir was fun though - not just the fact that we finally did the last few bits of the VW that we hadn't previously looked at, but also because during the warmup there was a great impromptu variation on the regular off-the-voice quiet staccato "hoh-hoh-hoh" thing (choir members will know the one I mean, I hope). This time we were instructed to do a long note every so often and then go back to the staccato. The sound of the whole choir doing this together was amazing!

The VW gig is a week on Thursday and I'm really looking forward to it. It was originally billed as a post-concert event, but now it seems we are part of the main concert after all. I hope they still change the lighting like they did last time, I thought that made all the difference.

I had a rehearsal with my band on Thursday. There was a last-minute rethink about what we were going to be able to rehearse due to a couple of people not being able to make it, but I was delighted that we were still able to try "This Little Babe" (from Britten's Ceremony of Carols) (yes, I know January is not the most obvious time to be singing this, but I only thought of it a couple of weeks ago and couldn't bear to wait 11 months to try it!) It occurred to me that there's no reason why it wouldn't work with guitar accompaniment instead of harp, and in fact it worked really well. Better than you might expect, actually, given that the three of us who were singing it all knew it very well, but we'd all previously sung the alto part. Since the other two are both 1st altos, though, I decided it made more sense for them to sing the soprano parts and me to stick with the alto part. To be fair, it only goes high right at the end... Anyway, I thought we sounded fabulous! The most amusing part was that I'd sent my guitarist an mp3 because he's never heard the song before, and he said he'd found it difficult to practise to due to the "weird echo effects on the recording". It took me a moment to realise that he meant the canon! I had to show him the vocal score to explain that what was going on in verse 3 was entirely down to Britten :-)

(The other amusing part was that we instructed him to pay no attention to us as we would put him off, which was fine until it got to the last line and his chords were supposed to alternate with ours... Despite that, he did very well for a first attempt, given that he doesn't really read music (he was playing from a chord sheet I'd created, as usual). Next time we'll be trying "Balulalow" as well - that needs 4 singers and we only had 3 on Thursday.)

In non-musical news, the Vendee Globe has been won, although only one competitor is home so far - the rest are a long way behind him. The winner is Michel Desjoyeaux, who also won it the year Ellen MacArthur came second (which is what originally made her famous). It's not been in the news at all, but maybe that's because there have been no British sailors with any chance of winning after Mike Golding and Alex Thomson had to pull out. Oh well. Maybe in 4 years' time!

A few links to finish. The Guardian tells us of how Argentina and Uruguay have been arguing about the history of the tango.

Someone at Manchester Confidential went to her first classical concert.

Boston.com has a theory about a sensitive female chord progression. I'd be more convinced if they'd quoted more songs I actually know (and I do know LOTS of songs!)

Boston.com is also responsible for the Big Picture, which I've mentioned before, but recently they had a great series of photos of London from above, at night.