This is the record of Mole.
Got up at 8am yesterday morning, after a nice dinner with the guvs (St Peter's gents) at the Cock Inn last night. Drove to Dad's and then got on the train to Rochester for my first Big Solo with Poscimur - the verse in This is the record of John. We'd been warned that Rochester would be packed due to the Dickens Festival. That wasn't the half of it.
Various brass bands, Dickensian coats, top hats and unfeasibly wide dresses wrestled with seething crowds of tattooed builders and smoking teenage mothers, and large numbers of Japanese and French tourists. I identified the way in to the cathedral by the small gap in the crowds.
Rochester Cathedral isn't the most visually pleasing or imposing building; it's large enough, but the nave isn't a patch on Ely or St Paul's. Also, it was packed iwth tourists. And we weren't singing Evensong in the quire but in the nave. No stalls to hide behind. This turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise; as the rearmost singer in the front row of Cantoris, it meant that I was able to stand almost facing the east door. Come the service, I attempted to bounce the sound off said door. Easier said than done when the place is full. I mean, packed.
What I'm happiest about is that I was able to tune the audiencecongregation out of my mind and just concentrate on the organ, listening to myself and watching Cathie the conductor. Both T's help on phrasing and Debbie Miles-Johnson's suggestion on Monday - in other words, singing the opening of the piece over and over till it had imprinted itself into my subconscious - really paid off.
So it went really well, and I was congratulated afterwards :D - this was my first solo with Posci but I don't think it will be my last...
My friend Claire the doctor, who sings alto with Posci, suggested that the chest pains may well be acid reflux. That makes a lot of sense, and I think I'll be buying a bottle of Gaviscon today.
Went back on the train to Dad's for a quick run-down and hug and then got back in the mûmak to start Phase 2 of the day - the trip to Cambridge for the CTS Foreyule Feast.
The M11 is a very boring motorway most of the time, but not, it seems, last night. Just south of Royston, it turned into a car park for about 20 minutes; seems there was a severe accident up on the turn-off. I'm not the best at unlit roads at the best of times, and so in a funny way the rest was welcome. I was able to get a bit of a breather, and put Galadriel the sat-nav together to tell me where to go, as all I remembered about my destination was that it was somewhere off Arbury Road. With my navigational skills, that would probably get me to Peterborough.
Got to the Foreyule Feast, drank a lot, talked a lot with old and (hopefully) new friends. A group of us read through the Taruithorn Reduced Lord of the Rings. General verdict from the RSC1 and myself was "some good gags, needs some fine tuning to be consistently funny". Broke people with extracts from The Sound of Mumaks and also met someone very charming last night. Soprano choral scholar, Con goer, lutenist, Tolkien fan, geek, lives near Cambridge.
But engaged. Damn. (There's always a catch).
Still, will probably be calling on her services for lute-snogs^Wsongs.
Thanks to ewx and naath for a good, if somewhat strangely undergrad-free, party and for putting me up.
Off to do Advent Carols this afternoon. Couple of tricky verses, especially the middle bit in Julian's arrangement of The Angel Gabriel which will be a couple of boys and me and Alex on alto only.
1: Reduced Silmarillion Company - the 3/4 of it that were there.
Various brass bands, Dickensian coats, top hats and unfeasibly wide dresses wrestled with seething crowds of tattooed builders and smoking teenage mothers, and large numbers of Japanese and French tourists. I identified the way in to the cathedral by the small gap in the crowds.
Rochester Cathedral isn't the most visually pleasing or imposing building; it's large enough, but the nave isn't a patch on Ely or St Paul's. Also, it was packed iwth tourists. And we weren't singing Evensong in the quire but in the nave. No stalls to hide behind. This turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise; as the rearmost singer in the front row of Cantoris, it meant that I was able to stand almost facing the east door. Come the service, I attempted to bounce the sound off said door. Easier said than done when the place is full. I mean, packed.
What I'm happiest about is that I was able to tune the audiencecongregation out of my mind and just concentrate on the organ, listening to myself and watching Cathie the conductor. Both T's help on phrasing and Debbie Miles-Johnson's suggestion on Monday - in other words, singing the opening of the piece over and over till it had imprinted itself into my subconscious - really paid off.
So it went really well, and I was congratulated afterwards :D - this was my first solo with Posci but I don't think it will be my last...
My friend Claire the doctor, who sings alto with Posci, suggested that the chest pains may well be acid reflux. That makes a lot of sense, and I think I'll be buying a bottle of Gaviscon today.
Went back on the train to Dad's for a quick run-down and hug and then got back in the mûmak to start Phase 2 of the day - the trip to Cambridge for the CTS Foreyule Feast.
The M11 is a very boring motorway most of the time, but not, it seems, last night. Just south of Royston, it turned into a car park for about 20 minutes; seems there was a severe accident up on the turn-off. I'm not the best at unlit roads at the best of times, and so in a funny way the rest was welcome. I was able to get a bit of a breather, and put Galadriel the sat-nav together to tell me where to go, as all I remembered about my destination was that it was somewhere off Arbury Road. With my navigational skills, that would probably get me to Peterborough.
Got to the Foreyule Feast, drank a lot, talked a lot with old and (hopefully) new friends. A group of us read through the Taruithorn Reduced Lord of the Rings. General verdict from the RSC1 and myself was "some good gags, needs some fine tuning to be consistently funny". Broke people with extracts from The Sound of Mumaks and also met someone very charming last night. Soprano choral scholar, Con goer, lutenist, Tolkien fan, geek, lives near Cambridge.
But engaged. Damn. (There's always a catch).
Still, will probably be calling on her services for lute-snogs^Wsongs.
Thanks to ewx and naath for a good, if somewhat strangely undergrad-free, party and for putting me up.
Off to do Advent Carols this afternoon. Couple of tricky verses, especially the middle bit in Julian's arrangement of The Angel Gabriel which will be a couple of boys and me and Alex on alto only.
1: Reduced Silmarillion Company - the 3/4 of it that were there.