The Great Newfoundland Update

[lanadela]

I just got back from Festival 500 in Newfoundland, it was amazing. Purely musically, it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. Socially, it was tough but just about as good as can be expected with all of us decompensating for the stress and sadness of leaving choir. The best part? Watching some of the best choirs in the world perform in concert and then performing ourselves and realizing we were just as good as most of them. We had the skill and the tone and the energy to blow ourselves away. I hope that after this everyone in the choir is going to realize that it's just not enough to be good technically, you also have to have enough energy to make people care. The mass choir rehearsals were great for that. Maria Guinand is a genius. Some choirs came in never having seen the music before, most had only practiced it once or twice, but by the end, everyone knew hte music and the choreography and most had everything memorized. She made us get invovled in the music even when we didn't know it that well. The 25 page, almost atonal song that I had been complaining about, sounded great with 500 voices and a full orchestra. At the end of our closing concert we did a 20 min long encore, with everyone dancing in their seats and screaming and claping and even when the conductor gave the cut off, the percussion section kept playing so we could keep dancing. It's when 1600 people start randomly doing unison movements that you know you're having fun. We did the hokey pokey before every concert by ourselves and the wave before our mass choir concert.

I met some "celebreties" of the choral world and thanked them for their music. Alberto Grau said I spoke good spanish. Elenor Daley gave lily her autograph. Maria Guinand is the swetest lady on the planet and her and Alberto are the cutest couple. I saw a choir that made me want to move to Argentina to join them. I saw another that made me want to move to Venezuela. I learned four new African songs. I was completely blown away hearing another choir sing a song that I had sung before.

There will be more details later, that was just the overall experience.

I think girlchoir is on its way back up.