![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choir is over for the season. yay.
My choir's last concert of the season was last night. I always have mixed feelings about our concerts. Mostly, it's because I like rehearsal much more than actual performance. Working on music is great. I'm not so big on the actual singing in front of people thing. I sort of endure it because it's the context in which I get to work on music. (Also, psychologically, I suspect that no one would actually make any progress if there weren't a concrete end point to shoot for.)
The concert actually went quite well, considering. For all sorts of impeccably valid reasons, our music director had missed a few rehearsals. The intern music director did a great job of filling in, but there are always some things which have to wait for the guy who'll actually be conducting you at the concert. So, we were probably at least a little under-rehearsed. No major disasters, so I'm happy.
The choir commissioned a piece for this concert and I thought it went off pretty well. There was a phrase where I think I became an inadvertent soloist. Or, at least, unlike every other phrase I sing, I didn't hear anyone singing with me and I'm fairly certain I was right. e.g., it's not like the rest of my section sang the phrase at the correct time. As near as I can tell, everyone else skipped the phrase completely. (It's also possible that we were so precise and we blended so well, that, for that one phrase, we sounded as if we were one.)
Next season is Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Now is the time for my annual angst about whether I want to stay in this choir. I'm not really putting a whole lot into it so I'm not surprised to not get a whole lot out of it.
What I ought to do is buckle down and actually learn the music so that I can do something novel, like make music, during the concert. I actually did some of that for this concert. If the choir was less well prepared than normal, I was actually better prepared than normal. The irony here is that I spent much of the concert staring at my music anyways. We were in a really live space so I had problems hearing and they placed my section in the back row so I couldn't count on seeing the conductor. As it turned out, unlike the dress rehearsals, I actually managed to see the conductor during crucial moments. (e.g., the entrance where, apparently, I was the only bass who came in.) The only advantage of being short, and in the back row behind taller singers is that no one could actually see me do the interpretive dance I call "Trying to find the ever shifting sight line to the conductor."
If I go on to next season, and it's pretty likely due to inertia if nothing else, I ought to impose some sort of extra goal on myself like memorizing the music. I mean, ultimately, it's purely a motivation issue. We don't do anything particularly difficult so it's not like I've had to work on the music to do ok. But if I actually worked at it, there's a chance that I'd do better than ok. Forcing myself to memorize the music, or the like, would get me to work at it and I'd see how much better than ok I do.
OTOH, the season doesn't start up again until September. (Ok, there's usually an open rehearsal in August, that doesn't count.) So I have plenty of time to figure this out.
In the mean time, I have a story that needs to go out to Clarkesworld and another to Writers of the Future.
The concert actually went quite well, considering. For all sorts of impeccably valid reasons, our music director had missed a few rehearsals. The intern music director did a great job of filling in, but there are always some things which have to wait for the guy who'll actually be conducting you at the concert. So, we were probably at least a little under-rehearsed. No major disasters, so I'm happy.
The choir commissioned a piece for this concert and I thought it went off pretty well. There was a phrase where I think I became an inadvertent soloist. Or, at least, unlike every other phrase I sing, I didn't hear anyone singing with me and I'm fairly certain I was right. e.g., it's not like the rest of my section sang the phrase at the correct time. As near as I can tell, everyone else skipped the phrase completely. (It's also possible that we were so precise and we blended so well, that, for that one phrase, we sounded as if we were one.)
Next season is Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Now is the time for my annual angst about whether I want to stay in this choir. I'm not really putting a whole lot into it so I'm not surprised to not get a whole lot out of it.
What I ought to do is buckle down and actually learn the music so that I can do something novel, like make music, during the concert. I actually did some of that for this concert. If the choir was less well prepared than normal, I was actually better prepared than normal. The irony here is that I spent much of the concert staring at my music anyways. We were in a really live space so I had problems hearing and they placed my section in the back row so I couldn't count on seeing the conductor. As it turned out, unlike the dress rehearsals, I actually managed to see the conductor during crucial moments. (e.g., the entrance where, apparently, I was the only bass who came in.) The only advantage of being short, and in the back row behind taller singers is that no one could actually see me do the interpretive dance I call "Trying to find the ever shifting sight line to the conductor."
If I go on to next season, and it's pretty likely due to inertia if nothing else, I ought to impose some sort of extra goal on myself like memorizing the music. I mean, ultimately, it's purely a motivation issue. We don't do anything particularly difficult so it's not like I've had to work on the music to do ok. But if I actually worked at it, there's a chance that I'd do better than ok. Forcing myself to memorize the music, or the like, would get me to work at it and I'd see how much better than ok I do.
OTOH, the season doesn't start up again until September. (Ok, there's usually an open rehearsal in August, that doesn't count.) So I have plenty of time to figure this out.
In the mean time, I have a story that needs to go out to Clarkesworld and another to Writers of the Future.
no subject
And also on getting two more stories into the wind. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!
no subject
Have fun, whatever you decide to do next year. And good luck with the stories. I'm hoping for the best :)