16 May 2019

Ed stood at the front again, in conducting mode. Which is good, because choirs need conductors. Our greeting was a warm up in itself, and the real reason for conductor mode was that the piano was bereft of electronic connections yet again. 

Plans for the night included establishing who does what in the middle of Summer Nights and the rather ambitious desire to make Nella Fantasia concert ready this very night. Ed made everyone stretch to warm up, and there was a dull crashing sound so we switched to some breath-and-hiss followed by an investigation into the expansion of our diaphragms. Ooooo-waaaaaaah!

And to a proper warm up with West Side Story was almost thwarted by the lack of sound from the big speakers. Buttons and switches were inneed of tweekimg so we sat down again to rest after all that hard work(out). We sat with folders to share, and sang Al Fresco. Jack tried to find the hidden electricity while we sang but only the side speakers near the old serving hatches would sing. Until Ed went over and turned absolutely everything on, including the microwave, and the big speakers were told I’ve Been Waiting For You. Never a truer word sung at DFS. The men needed some guidance on their Aaahs. Each of the men sang a different note, and needed bringing back in line. 

All Of Me sung in Dorchester had treated our audience to a somewhat mumbled improv section, probably due to a lack of confidence or the worry of sounding like a bunch of chickens so it turned into a sort of hum or a long fart. Ed told me to blog that. And he taught us something cool to sing collectively and keep that middle section going. This proved hard to do without music but we tried, and were allowed to sing it with the music again. 

Moving on to Crying In The Rain the backing track rolled out beautifully and so did we, because the choir master said the harmonies were lovely. We felt on Top Of The World when we got to listen to Karen on YouTube. We sang it much more better after that and moved on to He Ain’t Heav-eh, He’s My Brother but I just laughed uncontrollably as my autocorrect added My Bottom. This might be a good time to retire from blogging. Maybe not. 

Summer Nights are now being split into parts, and not boys-n-girls as we do find ourselves a bit girl-heavy. We need more brothers perhaps! Homework requires studying this, esp the part-1s!

And then with only four minutes left before eight we stood with our sheet music for Nella Fantasia ...

Well done DFS. You worked very hard tonight especially Jack for taking the sound desk to bits and putting it back together again. Yay! Keep singing. I love you x