Blue Skies and Music

Blue sky three days running way. We had fog last night though. It made everything look mysterious *waggles fingers and uses "mysterious" voice*. It also meant it was really cold. It's still cold today but at least it's clear and blue and cold.

The Madrigirls performed again this weekend. It was a somewhat bazaar performance as part of "LentFest". I think someone forgot to inform them about the whole fest = feast and feasting is what you're not supposed to do during Lent thing. The performance was "multimedia" with a slide show going on while people played and sang and there was even the obligatory liturgical dance. One of the best performers disappeared half way through. "Ah well, you know these tempermental concert pianists" was the announcer's comment. "Hopefully he'll show up again; we have his piano!" It turned out he had gone home ill, however. He was a Polish concert pianist who had been "discovered" as a cleaner working in the Glasgow University Chapel. And he was really good. One of those ones who doesn't even bring sheet music up and makes it look like he's just fiddling around a bit with the piano while producing amazing music. So it was really a shame he didn't do his second piece.

Our stuff went well. Not all medievaly this time. We had an American shapenote hymn (funny I had to come to the UK to find out about the American shapenote tradition). We also sang backup for "The Border Band" which was more fun than I thought it would be. When we first looked at the music I couldn't stop giggling, it was all so cheesy. But it was really rather fun to sing. I've got to say, for a professional concert in a real professional venue with a £10 a ticket entry price...that was one of the most low-key performances I've ever given. I couldn't manage to be the slightest bit nervous.

Our next concert sounds fantastic though, and I really hope I'll be in the UK to be in it! We're splitting the concert with some monks singing Gregorian chants etc. We're singing two songs with them and the rest of the concert is split between us. It sounds great. And we're learning some really cool medievaly music for it too. ("Erthe unto Erthe" for one, for anyone who listens to Medieval Babes). The director said it would be fine if I missed a couple rehearsals as long as I took away the music and learned it, so if I can just get back in the UK for the 9th than I can sing. Oh, it would be so awesome. (Goes away to continue plotting and scheming).