It just don't work out that way in the course of a lifetime run over and over again

I've just returned from both a choir rehearsal followed by the audition for the choir I'd just rehearsed with. I'm in, singing Alto I. I sat down at the beginning of the rehearsal next to a girl named Eliza (strong French accent, I had to ask her to repeat it 3 times). Our choral director then barked a question at her in french and she barked right back. Apparently she was a first year, this was their first meeting, and they were introducing themselves. Eliza then turned to me and said, "When a teacher scares you, you scare them right back."

The unfortunate side of the performance aspect in this choir is that, for the semester, we’re singing all Russian repertoire. This makes for, I find, an excruciatingly long experience as an audience member because Russian choral music tends to be mostly folk songs (occasionally a hymn or prayer) with four or five verses each separated by a chorus. Also harmonically, these composers (with the exception of Tchaikovsky) aint all that inspired (i-v-i-v-ii-v-i). On the other hand, the upside of the whole rehearsal process is that it's all Russian repertoire which means that there's always echoed counterpoint going on although it's often not inspiring (we just can't all be Buxtehude), and as the text is Russian, when you're singing each note becomes not part of a word, but more of a meditation on a single syllable, making singing the same vocal line through each verse less tiresome. The choral director is great. Ever heard anyone yell with both a British and Russian accent? She's high energy quick quick "jzeh not ze!" all the time for an hour and half. Tireless, she is. Which leaves me, well, tired. Needless to say, although it's not the Palestrina I was swooning over this morning, it's home again home again to be singing with a choir again.

So I think I'll grab some yogurt and a few chapters of the Jane Austen Book Club before soccer tonight. More later...


They were ever so happy, they were ever so sad,
To grow old in a new world, through good times and bad.
All the parties and weddings, the Ceili's and Wakes,
When New York was Irish, full of joy and heartbreaks - Mary O'Dowd

(I love that close second melting to a third on "ever" and "parties". I remember listening to that opening a capella bit over and over and over when I was little on the living room stereo at Dad's)