And Now, The Recap

While others concerned themselves about being taken up from the Earth, we spent our weekend in more mundane pursuits. First, we rested up. Next, we rehearsed. Finally, we regaled our audience with our best performance, ever — and our last official performance of the year.

And then The City of Glasgow Chorus went home and fell down.

T. forgot to take a shot of the Stage Door entrance, which clearly says BBC above it, which was a small thrill for her. Apparently the Beeb uses the building to record concerts for radio. What was once the site of a candleworks — thus the name of that area of the city, Candleriggs — the City Halls/Fruitmarket area is now all things gentrified and nice, full of little shops and restaurants, and no whiff of tallow — or fruit. We didn’t have time to do much exploring, however! We were signed in, and hustled up to the sixth floor for our three hours on the stage.

While the rehearsal was long and basically boring and filled with bits that had nothing to do with us — any full dress rehearsal tends to be, and why does one never remember to bring a book to these things?! — the concert itself was all things lovely and gorgeous. A young violinist, whose father sings with us in the chorus (he was so proud he was practically vibrating) played the romantic Vaughn Williams tune, A Lark Ascending and brought down the house. She’s in the last moments of her last year as a student at the Chethams School of Music, and is off to the London next year, to take the world by storm.

Most of our soloists are students from The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and are up-and-coming professionals. This time our singer was Brazilian-born baritone, Michel deSouza, who was just amazing, and also quite resplendent in his tux and tails. (T. imagined him singing in The King & I, because his delivery in the Belshazzar piece was very lordly — reminiscent of Yul Brenner.) Mr. deSouza clearly enjoyed himself; even during rehearsal both the chorus and orchestra smiled as he emoted dramatically and sang. Honestly, next time we do this, someone needs to suggest costumes.

The Scottish Festival Orchestra, which is T’s favorite orchestra, is made up of all of the best professional musicians from the various orchestral groups throughout Scotland. It is, for that reason, so very good, and they’re also a lot of fun to work with, unlike some orchestra groups who seem to see the chorus as a horrible encumbrance they’re forced to endure. Also, they have great cellists, who saved our semi-chorus from going slightly flat in an unaccompanied section by very quietly drawing their bows across the bass note — and voila, the entire semi chorus re-tuned. (A great save, which may have even been written into the music, but probably was not.) Amended, 6/1: Apparently El Maestro reads this blog, and argues that the semi-chorus actually wasn’t flat, and the cellists came in, right where they were supposed to. We accede the point, and maintain that the Festival Orchestra still has the best cellists, ever.

Another thing T. was excited about was the number of women in the orchestra and in the brass, who, while sadly not pictured, were stationed along the sides of the room in their own little balcony – which made their voluntaries ring out very nicely. Aside from the usual section of female flautists (what IS IT with that?! How does an instrument become so gendered? Parents: encourage your girls play the French horn and the bassoon, the cymbals and the trumpet. Please. Enough with the girly flutes.), there were myriad females on all instruments, including a lady trombonist and a silver-haired lady on percussion. (She does a fabulous buzz roll on the snare drums. The entire percussion section got quite a workout during the Belshazzar.)

The acoustics in the City Halls are very live, which was a real pain whilst rehearsing; we could not hear ourselves over the orchestra — we actually felt rather painfully deafened. However, once the hall was filled, we heard ourselves just fine, and believe that the audience even heard a word or two. As always, singing with no electronic amplification is a tricky thing, and very reliant upon the room and the crowd, but it worked out fairly well this time.

Afterward, T. stripped off The Blouse of Purple Hideousness (We note El Maestro seems to have no opinion on this one. Hmph.) for the last time — with a sad little pang, and many sighs of woe from her section — and we staggered home. A stagger it was; D. overexerted himself just hanging out through the rehearsal and into the performance — a full seven hours, and T. sang so loudly in the final chorus she had spots swimming in her vision and the room darkened alarmingly. (It was also overly warm in the choir stalls.) We were both well and truly ready to go home and crash, but were awakened early Monday morning. Now, usually our morning wake up comes from The Ring-Necked Pigeons From Hades, they who have chosen to nest in an old chimney stack, and we can hear their mad cooing down the vent into our bedroom, which is right behind the bed. This time, however, our early wake-up came from The Wind From Who Knows Where, which rattled through said vent. ::sigh::

Monday’s day long gale force winds rose and rose, getting to just above 70 mph. at times. Eventually, the winds shut down the train system throughout the city, due to branches on the lines and random flooding. Meanwhile, planes were already grounded (or headed that direction) due to the Icelandic volcano ash. D’s coworkers were shooed out of the building at five minutes to five, in order to catch the last moving conveyances going anywhere.

“Scotland cannot take any weather,” one of D’s coworkers sighed. Well, that’s not exactly true. Scotland can take any weather just fine, as long as everyone goes home and sits tight and stays off the roads and the trains. Then, everything’s great.

It seemed a good evening to go home and make soup. And oat bars.

Monday was D’s first day at work on his new schedule, which gives him a day on and a day off, in order to see if the cataclysmic weariness he experiences can’t be coped with in that way. So far so good – we have had nine days in a row with no falls or mishaps or calls to EMT’s. Sometimes in the battle of What We Want to Do vs. What The Body Says We Will Do, the body wins, and so we learn to take it easy and listen when the body says “I’m too tired to keep going.” Epstein-Barr or mono, or whatever this is, really humbles and focuses a person. Meanwhile, we’re still awaiting the lab results, which should probably come in on Wednesday of this week (or we’re going to go and storm the lab), and D. is working on his departmental presentation. After this week, he’ll know how much revision he has left on his dissertation (or, if you’re a UK citizen, his PhD thesis), and the date for his oral exams will be set. We will finally have a clue about the time frame for what we’re doing next.