Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Crazy Week

This week marks my first set of performances with the Seattle Symphony Chorale. And they don't mess around - performance weeks, including final rehearsals and the performances themselves, chew up and spit out nearly every evening from now until Sunday. But I'm not complaining - we're doing the ENTIRE Messiah this week, five times. With a proper symphony and a disciplined choir in an enormous and very grand symphony hall. Nerves jumpin'... Old nags in the chorale tell me that the first combined rehearsal with the chorale, the symphony and the great hall always makes all the newbies cry, so little Cerise will bring hankies, believe you me. We normally rehearse with just the choir with (brilliant) piano accompaniment in a rented hall elsewhere in the city. So I've never sung with the symphony, never been in Benaroya Hall, and never met the Maestro conducting us. That all changes this week. [dear God, please don't let me screw up] If you know me at all, you know that my transparency - readily obvious on this blog - extends into my real life. Which means my screwups are usually loud, magnificent and very public. If only spectacular public humiliation was a market commodity, because to be honest it doesn't even bother me that much.

Cerise

2 Comments:

Blogger Grey Owl said...

Whoa! Sounds like your week is going to be busy but great. I've been to see the Messiah a few times - I was not graced with a decent singing voice, so participation was not an option. Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

12/13/2005 2:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That performance was the best choral experience of my life. It was incredibly concise and clean. Each piece floated, yet commanded ones attention. The hemeolas were fresh, not bogged down by the weight of cliched romantic interpretation. Power came from the space between the notes, through the use of marcado, not by an over abundance of forte. The choir had a lovely texture and consonants that added a percussive sparkle. Overall, I left the performance feeling that I had all of my this-is-what-makes-a-great-performance buttons pushed.

-Ramon

1/31/2006 8:07 PM  

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