Holly Jolly

Aaaaaand the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus concerts are finished for the season. The holiday season that is. Much to my relief… And melancholia. 

  
The concerts went well. REALLY well, actually. To the point where even I was impressed with the sound at points (and I’m ridiculously picky).  Especially the Sunday matinee; I think that one went best of all. 

  
I think Sunday went especially well for the Chamber Singers. 

I sing in this group (about 21 singers selected from the chorus).  This is the group that sang at the Guthrie and also recorded a couple tracks on the holiday CD. 

Anyway, we sang an acapella arrangement of Dona Nobis Pacem for the concert. Easy words, but a deceptively difficult arrangement as it was through-composed in a polyphonic chant style with key changes and close harmonies. And the big moment of the piece where we finally have a heroic chord…. Well, the cutoff just rang and floated in the hall. 

We even got a “wow” from the audience. Which was nice. 

Even though all three performances went very well, Sunday’s was my favorite. It was where I was actually “in” the piece while singing, which happens so rarely because I’m usually so focused on technical things that I just can’t let go and perform. 

It was nice. 

I also sang with a small group to promote our concert on local tv (WCCO).  We were there bright and early on Saturday morning for that. 

   
   
As it turns out, WAY more people watch early Saturday morning TV than I anticipated. I’ve had many people tell me they saw me and that we sounded good. 

More on this interesting development tomorrow. 

But for now, the concerts are done and I feel grateful they went so well and that we had great audiences. I’m also a tinge sad it’s over, because I’ll miss singing with the guys. 

But it starts again early in January and spring is going to be cray-cray.