choir concert
Tonight (Thursday) I went with my mother to a choir concert in Sumiyoshi. We got there almost an hour before it was supposed to start, so she decided she wanted to get a drink, and not just a vending machine drink, either. She took me in this tea shop and ordered herself an apple drink with ice cream or sherbet or something in it. I took a look at the menu and was rather reluctant to order anything because it was all pretty expensive, but she told me I should get something, so I ordered some orange juice. I figured I could always use more vitamin C. Anyway, it was basically just one glass of orange juice with ice and a slice of orange, but it was like 600 yen. Craziness. Her drink was about 750 yen. Oh, we did get a couple of sugared cracker/bread things with it too, but still. Well, whatever, it was her choice to drag me in there.
Anyway, it was held at Uhara Hall, which is actually quite near the JR Sumiyoshi station. I didn't realize until we got there that she didn't have the tickets yet. She bought three, which confused me at first, but then she explained that a friend of hers was coming also. The poster she'd showed me for this event had said 3000 yen per ticket, but she actually paid 2000 per ticket. When I asked her about it, she said that since she was connected to the company, she got a discount. It must be some event sponsored by the company that her husband works for or something. That made sense though because I saw there one of the guys who had gone on the Asahi trip with us (remember that?). I'm not sure quite what he does normally, and he didn't seem to be doing much when I saw him there, but he came over and talked to my mother for a minute. He was the one who kept talking to me about German last time though. That also made sense, because, as I found out when we got programs, the featured choir was an all-male choir from Germany. There was also a glee club choir from Konan that was composed of elderly Japanese people. (I'm not sure how that works, but that's what I gathered based on the program and the performance.)
So for the first third of the concert, the German choir sang a variety of songs (all in German). The choir consisted of about twenty-five elementary or middle school boys and about fifteen college guys. Of course, the boys had been trained to sing all the high parts that girls would normally sing in a mixed choir, and they were really good at it too. If I'd only heard the songs without seeing the choir, I'd probably think it was a mixed choir, and I know from experience how high even adult guys can sing sometimes (especially Japanese guys for some reason...hehe). In one song, two of the boys did a sort of solo (they were singing together without the rest of the choir for a short time) where they went really high at one point. Except for one note where one of them faltered a little, that section sounded extremely good, and they were given special applause after the song.
I thought the conductor was pretty good too, or at least, whoever had trained these kids. I've been in several choirs myself, so I know what kinds of things choir teachers have trouble getting a group of kids to do accurately. What I noticed was that they were very accurate on note cutoffs and discriminating in their use of various tempos and degrees of loudness. I remember those things were the things we always had to practice over and over, especially cutoffs, because if not everyone's paying close attention to the conductor, it's really hard to get a whole group of singers to end their notes at exactly the same time. But if you get it right, it sounds really good. These people were good, and it wasn't that some of them were college students. Everyone has to do it right for it to sound good, so that meant that the schoolkids also had been trained well. Another nice touch was the fact that after a couple of songs with the whole choir, the kids sat down in front while the college guys sang a song by themselves. It was a good way to give the kids a rest so they wouldn't get too tired for the rest of the concert.
I remember thinking that their handling of their music was a little sloppy though, at least based on the standards I remember having to follow in high school. For formal concerts, we had music binders with all the songs for the concert in order, so we didn't have to move any pages around. I noticed that these people kept having to shuffle their music pages around to get to the next song they were doing.
For the second part of the concert, the Japanese choir from Konan came out and sang three or four songs (all in Japanese). I don't think I've ever seen a choir with people as old as those people were before. I mean, most of them had gray hair and everything. I forgot to mention it above, but for some reason, there was actually one elderly man in the German choir too. I have no idea what he was doing there when everyone else was so much younger, but whatever. Anyway, the Japanese songs were really pretty. I think that choir wasn't quite as professionally trained, but they still sounded pretty good, especially considering who was singing anyway. After their songs, the German choir came back out and both choirs together sang a few songs. One was in German, sung mostly by the German choir; one was in Japanese, sung mostly by the Japanese choir, and one was in both languages, sung kind of alternately. I suspect the Japanese may have been some kind of translation of the German, although I couldn't understand enough of either to know for sure.
After intermission, the German choir came out again and sang a few more songs, a couple of which were in Latin this time. (In my experience, every good choir has at least a few Latin songs in its repertoire.) The other songs were in German again. I don't understand any German, so I can't really say much about the individual songs, but I could tell that the performance was technically quite good. (They could have been singing the lyrics to nursery rhymes and I wouldn't have been able to tell though.) One song near the end had a Japanese woman come out to sing a solo part. She was absolutely amazing. She was singing in German, which is probably difficult enough for a European non-native speaker, but even more so for a Japanese I would think.. But I could tell that if she doesn't speak it herself, she's had a lot of practice with the sounds of the language. Even aside from the language though, she had an incredible voice. I won't even try to describe it further. I don't really like that style of song all that much, but I have to recognize talent when it's in front of my nose (or ears, I guess).
The last thing was an encore, of course, which was also a very nice touch. The encore song was an old traditional Japanese song that had something to do with sakura (cherry blossoms). I don't really know the song, but somehow I recognized it by the lyrics as being a traditional song. It seemed very appropriate for an encore though - like a final tribute to the country where they were performing, you know?
Here's a picture I took right after the song with the Japanese woman. She's standing between the conductor and the piano, although the conductor pretty much fades into the background of black-clad people. The picture isn't very good, sorry. I'm not sure what happened, because the lighting seemed quite adequate to my eyes, but the light contrast was probably pretty weird in that room with only the stage lit up. Anyway, you can get some sort of idea about what the choir looked like, at least. Oh yeah, the old guy in the choir is about the third person from the right in the front row.
After the concert was over, my mother led her friend and me to a nearby restaurant that served several kinds of foreign cooking, including some Italian and some German dishes. I chose just a plain dish of spaghetti with meat sauce, which tasted quite good. They both chose the same dish, some alfredo-looking pasta dish. It was nice to have dinner out instead of waiting until we got home, since it was probably at least 8:30 by then. The food was pretty good, but compared to other places I've been, it wasn't really worth the price, so I wouldn't go there by myself if I had a choice. I didn't have any chance to pay for it anyway though (like usual when I'm out with my host mother), so it didn't matter this time.
Anyway, the concert as a whole was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I went. I don't really like classical music very much, but I do like choirs for some reason. Maybe because I was in several when I was younger. You know, this is the sort of thing I meant to go to once in a while at the Krannert Center at school, but never got around to seeing. It's funny that I get to see an event that's mostly European when I'm in Japan of all places. (Yes I know, Japan and Germany are good friends and all that, but I was just thinking of the irony here.)
Anyway, it was held at Uhara Hall, which is actually quite near the JR Sumiyoshi station. I didn't realize until we got there that she didn't have the tickets yet. She bought three, which confused me at first, but then she explained that a friend of hers was coming also. The poster she'd showed me for this event had said 3000 yen per ticket, but she actually paid 2000 per ticket. When I asked her about it, she said that since she was connected to the company, she got a discount. It must be some event sponsored by the company that her husband works for or something. That made sense though because I saw there one of the guys who had gone on the Asahi trip with us (remember that?). I'm not sure quite what he does normally, and he didn't seem to be doing much when I saw him there, but he came over and talked to my mother for a minute. He was the one who kept talking to me about German last time though. That also made sense, because, as I found out when we got programs, the featured choir was an all-male choir from Germany. There was also a glee club choir from Konan that was composed of elderly Japanese people. (I'm not sure how that works, but that's what I gathered based on the program and the performance.)
So for the first third of the concert, the German choir sang a variety of songs (all in German). The choir consisted of about twenty-five elementary or middle school boys and about fifteen college guys. Of course, the boys had been trained to sing all the high parts that girls would normally sing in a mixed choir, and they were really good at it too. If I'd only heard the songs without seeing the choir, I'd probably think it was a mixed choir, and I know from experience how high even adult guys can sing sometimes (especially Japanese guys for some reason...hehe). In one song, two of the boys did a sort of solo (they were singing together without the rest of the choir for a short time) where they went really high at one point. Except for one note where one of them faltered a little, that section sounded extremely good, and they were given special applause after the song.
I thought the conductor was pretty good too, or at least, whoever had trained these kids. I've been in several choirs myself, so I know what kinds of things choir teachers have trouble getting a group of kids to do accurately. What I noticed was that they were very accurate on note cutoffs and discriminating in their use of various tempos and degrees of loudness. I remember those things were the things we always had to practice over and over, especially cutoffs, because if not everyone's paying close attention to the conductor, it's really hard to get a whole group of singers to end their notes at exactly the same time. But if you get it right, it sounds really good. These people were good, and it wasn't that some of them were college students. Everyone has to do it right for it to sound good, so that meant that the schoolkids also had been trained well. Another nice touch was the fact that after a couple of songs with the whole choir, the kids sat down in front while the college guys sang a song by themselves. It was a good way to give the kids a rest so they wouldn't get too tired for the rest of the concert.
I remember thinking that their handling of their music was a little sloppy though, at least based on the standards I remember having to follow in high school. For formal concerts, we had music binders with all the songs for the concert in order, so we didn't have to move any pages around. I noticed that these people kept having to shuffle their music pages around to get to the next song they were doing.
For the second part of the concert, the Japanese choir from Konan came out and sang three or four songs (all in Japanese). I don't think I've ever seen a choir with people as old as those people were before. I mean, most of them had gray hair and everything. I forgot to mention it above, but for some reason, there was actually one elderly man in the German choir too. I have no idea what he was doing there when everyone else was so much younger, but whatever. Anyway, the Japanese songs were really pretty. I think that choir wasn't quite as professionally trained, but they still sounded pretty good, especially considering who was singing anyway. After their songs, the German choir came back out and both choirs together sang a few songs. One was in German, sung mostly by the German choir; one was in Japanese, sung mostly by the Japanese choir, and one was in both languages, sung kind of alternately. I suspect the Japanese may have been some kind of translation of the German, although I couldn't understand enough of either to know for sure.
After intermission, the German choir came out again and sang a few more songs, a couple of which were in Latin this time. (In my experience, every good choir has at least a few Latin songs in its repertoire.) The other songs were in German again. I don't understand any German, so I can't really say much about the individual songs, but I could tell that the performance was technically quite good. (They could have been singing the lyrics to nursery rhymes and I wouldn't have been able to tell though.) One song near the end had a Japanese woman come out to sing a solo part. She was absolutely amazing. She was singing in German, which is probably difficult enough for a European non-native speaker, but even more so for a Japanese I would think.. But I could tell that if she doesn't speak it herself, she's had a lot of practice with the sounds of the language. Even aside from the language though, she had an incredible voice. I won't even try to describe it further. I don't really like that style of song all that much, but I have to recognize talent when it's in front of my nose (or ears, I guess).
The last thing was an encore, of course, which was also a very nice touch. The encore song was an old traditional Japanese song that had something to do with sakura (cherry blossoms). I don't really know the song, but somehow I recognized it by the lyrics as being a traditional song. It seemed very appropriate for an encore though - like a final tribute to the country where they were performing, you know?
Here's a picture I took right after the song with the Japanese woman. She's standing between the conductor and the piano, although the conductor pretty much fades into the background of black-clad people. The picture isn't very good, sorry. I'm not sure what happened, because the lighting seemed quite adequate to my eyes, but the light contrast was probably pretty weird in that room with only the stage lit up. Anyway, you can get some sort of idea about what the choir looked like, at least. Oh yeah, the old guy in the choir is about the third person from the right in the front row.
After the concert was over, my mother led her friend and me to a nearby restaurant that served several kinds of foreign cooking, including some Italian and some German dishes. I chose just a plain dish of spaghetti with meat sauce, which tasted quite good. They both chose the same dish, some alfredo-looking pasta dish. It was nice to have dinner out instead of waiting until we got home, since it was probably at least 8:30 by then. The food was pretty good, but compared to other places I've been, it wasn't really worth the price, so I wouldn't go there by myself if I had a choice. I didn't have any chance to pay for it anyway though (like usual when I'm out with my host mother), so it didn't matter this time.
Anyway, the concert as a whole was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I went. I don't really like classical music very much, but I do like choirs for some reason. Maybe because I was in several when I was younger. You know, this is the sort of thing I meant to go to once in a while at the Krannert Center at school, but never got around to seeing. It's funny that I get to see an event that's mostly European when I'm in Japan of all places. (Yes I know, Japan and Germany are good friends and all that, but I was just thinking of the irony here.)