Our revels now are ended....

and the Chorale's summer holidays have started.

The concert went brilliantly. The Little Jazz Mass sounded excellent, and the Waltzes went without a hitch. Sara Caine sang a great collection of jazz classics, accompanied by our very own Jonathan Eyre, and the Rutter birthday madrigals were a great end to the singing term. There were very nearly one or two 'oops' moments, one soprano admitted to me that she got a bit lost in one of the Waltzes' repeats and I nearly came in three bars early in one of the madrigals. Thankfully, no-one noticed.

Tom and Alex were on fine form on the piano, and the audience enjoyed the evening and the music very much.

We've got a long summer break to recharge the batteries before starting rehearsals for Messiah back in September. I'm going to miss my weekly sing!

This is the moment...

We had a great final rehearsal in the Cathedral on Tuesday night, where everything came together pretty well. It's always a bit tricky getting used to a new acoustic, but clever positioning of the piano (you'll see what I mean from the pictures) meant it didn't take long to adapt to the new sound.

We'll be joined tonight by Sara Caine, who'll be singing some great jazz pieces, as well as being accompanied by Alex Woodrow, Director of Music at the Cathedral and our own Tom Carr. It should be a really good evening of music, we'd love to see you.

Bradford Cathedral, 7.00pm  - tickets will be available on the door.

Breakdown/ Staple it together....

We've been separated for the last two weeks, with the men disappearing downstairs while the ladies rehearsed upstairs. The idea being that each group could concentrate on the bits they find tricky without holding up rehearsals for the other parts.
To do this, we ended up sitting round the piano, so it was quite odd for me to start with, having the Altos singing in one ear and the rest of the Sopranos in the other. We'll get back together on Tuesday, and hopefully all the crinkly bits will have been ironed out.

Tickets for the concert on 13th June are available - please see the website for details.

It's the way he tells them.....

We had free stand-up in our rehearsal last week as Jonathan had found a collection of bad jokes to 'entertain' us with (and some of them were dreadful).

Musically, things were much more successful, the Waltzes (which it appears we're singing in English, rather than German, phew) are coming on quite well. Some of them are really catchy, while others are still feeling a bit scary to sing. The Little Jazz Mass is really good, and the Birthday Madrigals are also getting there. We do need to do a bit of work on some of the under part bits, the Sopranos were having a few timing issues last week, but nothing too scary.

Tickets for the concert, Saturday 13th June at Bradford Cathedral are now available - please visit the website http://www.bradfordchorale.org.uk/ to find out more.

There's no harm in being wrong, you know...

There were a few wobbly notes floating about at this week's rehearsal, but actually considering we're around 5 weeks from concert day, things are going pretty well.

The Waltzes are getting better and we're now singing actual words rather than just concentrating on the tune. I am a bit confused (it doesn't take much) as I was convinced we were singing them in the original German, but it appears we might be doing the English translation so watch this space. We also got to hear the double piano effect as Jonathan joined Tom at the keyboard to accompany us. The top piano part actually makes picking out the soprano line much easier, so if we can manage without, it'll be a breeze when it is being played (at least, that's the plan).

I could have danced all night...

So I've realised that the Little Jazz Mass and the Birthday Madrigals are catchier than I first imagined. Normally the music we're rehearsing starts playing on repeat in my head about a fortnight before the concert, when we're confident in all the notes and are putting the finishing touches to it.  I've had the Jazz Mass and the Madrigals in my head all week, after only 3 rehearsals. I'll be going (even more) bonkers by the time the concert comes round.

We started learning the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes this week, and they are tricky. Not just because they're in German (which we didn't even attempt on the first go), but because they repeat from funny places, and you have to really concentrate to know what you're meant to be singing. I'm sure they're great when you get in the swing of them, it's just quite hard work at the moment, and I'm anticipating more when we start on the actual lyrics (languages were never my strong point, German especially).

vorwärts und aufwärts, as they say....

Smile, and the world smiles with you

Laugh in the face of adversity, the saying goes, and last week I took that advice rather too literally.

Chilcott's Little Jazz Mass is really quite hard in places, especially during the first few rehearsals, where you're trying to anticipate where you're going next. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you get the giggles when it does sound a bit 'off', or at least, I do. I'm blaming too much Easter chocolate...

Lots of progress was made though, we've note-bashed the majority of the Jazz Mass now, and the parts we've run a few times were actually sounding pretty good.