5th December 2013

The one without Cat ...

Numbers were down last night, and so was I, popping paracetamol and feeling shivery - I'll bring a note from my Mum next time! Here is the running order for next weeks concert. More info as Ed supplies it!

Part 1

I Love It When You Call A Winter's Tale Somewhere Only We Know In the Bleak Mid Winter Keeping the Dream Alive

Part 2

The King and I Uptown Girl Groovy Kind of Love First of May O Come All ye Faithfull

28 November 2013

The one were we got into position ...

But first we started with a nice carol, round the Christmas tree. The brave and strong may attempt the descant parts of course! We had fun deleting 2/5 of In The Bleak Mid Winter, so that should help us fast forward to spring! There are some very odd verses in there if you ask me!

And then we got ino concert position, ready for our concert in 2 weeks time! And sang through King And I Number! Got reminded to SMILE as usual, then we sat back down again and worked out way through our running order. Ed didn't ask me for the keys this time, and I mostly rested my voice on account of having a cold. 

The First of May was sung with passion, this week in the key of C-2, up slightly from last week. No it's beginning to sound like I'm doing 'the charts'. A childhood listening to Radio One on Sunday nights, me thinks!

Somewhere Only We Know was followed by A Winter's Tale. I asked for the keys and promptly forgot them!

Next week we will be in the common room making room for a Christmas Market! You could always buy some popcorn to much through during the practice. No throwing it at Ed if his microphone goes pop or slips down his cleavage ...

Keep singing my dears, as it's less than two weeks until our pavvy concert! XXXX

22 November 2013

St. Mary’s Church Concert - A Rather Posh Evening with Ed Hintze and Friends!

A Rather wonderful and varied evening was had by all who attended A Rather Posh Evening with Ed Hintze and Friends down at St Mary's Church. Ed and Friends including some well-loved members of his choir, Dorset for Singing gathered around the beautiful grand piano and sang their hearts out, raising a a rather impressive £165 for Parkinsons UK!

The concert featured a good variety of entertainment, and included an instrumental version of 'winner takes it all' so we could really enjoy the rich sound of the special piano too. Ed treated us to his best Richard Clayderman impression, and of course, a few of his jokes dotted about the evening too!

Part 1

All By Myself – Ed
Just Give Me a Reason – Julie, Ed
Somewhere Only We Know – Cat
The Sun Whose Rays – Caroline
Rusalska’s Song to the Moon – Caroline
Runaway – Carol and Neil
The Winner Takes It All – Ed
A Thousand Years – Julie
Tit Willow – Ian
When I Was You Man – Julie, Ed
The Cherry Tree Carol – Carol and Neil
Gethsemane – Ed

-Interval-

Part 2

Rusalska’s Song to the Moon – Caroline
Don’t Know Why – Julie
Fly Me To The Moon/Summertime – Ed
Slow – Cat
Starlight – Ed
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – Cat
You Are So Beautiful – Julie
Anthem - Ed

21 November 2013

The one with the cleavage ...

We gathered in the common room and realised that we had a Christmas concert imminent and no festive numbers! Then Ed sneakily asked me to check the blog for keys before we started. So you don't know that, right? The blog actually has a useful purpose after all!

A huge thank you to Jack and Harry for working out how to put words on our lovely website! We wont need a £500 webmaster after all ... or any expensive microphone stands, look .... 

In NOTICES - Ed is gathering names for soloists to sing at our Christmas concert, so let him know if you are up for it. Then he plugged tomorrow's concert, which of course I will blog for you at the weekend. Because i love you!

We kicked off with The Feeling, but using very old words. And extra free words thrown in by choir.... 

It nice to be Keeping the Dream Alive, but it looks like we are completely lost with out the uppy- and downy-arrows!  Because they were missing tonight! Jack to find all new words for next time!

Of course we were all in the wrong places, seating-wise, for The King And I. ''And now and then, we'll sing, something out-of-key!'' 

So in a bid to Festive-Up our next concert, we had a shout out ... In The Bleak Midwinter was first up for a Christmas Sing-a-long. We popped a blues pop ballad sound with it and rocked the common room. Happy Christmas indeed, but we need to perform it more gently for Lesley, but more roughly for Jenny. Ok!

We killed Aled Jones, then moved onto a bit of Slade in various keys - ending up in PLUS 3. 

Away in a Manger was chosen to be an interactive number. I suddenly felt very small again singing that one. Well, smaller. Cough! Then I found out I don't know Jingle Bell Rock! Little Matty didn't like that one either ...

We had an education searching for lyrics for Holly And The Ivy, I can tell you! The Internet is a scary place! And then Santa got stuck up the Chimney, briefly before A Winter's Tale... F-5 for that one!

The First of May is well know to us, C-3 was given a try! 

And the cleavage? Ed could not be heard at the back in the common room, so he plugged in a microphone and was in need of somewhere to wedge it. Oh how we laughed at such innovativeness, or was it at the inevitable droop? How I love Dorset For Singing! I might get banned from blogging after this session though!

Keep practicing. Please. Love you, Cat xxx

14 November 2013

The one with the Top A Flat .... Where Ed had to rapidly De-Camp!

After a shorter warm up this week, we had notices then dived right into The King and I. 

Our 12 dec concert is now live on the official pavilion website, where you can boom tickets for friends and family and other innocent victims. Keep a out for details of our tour D'Oxford! Possibly the 4th July weekend! And we might do a flash mob at some point, but its all very hush-hush at the moment, well it has to be, otherwise it wouldn't be a flash mob, would it?

Julia the Christmas pudding lady also co-ordinates carol singing this festive season. See her for pudding orders, and meeting to entertain folks!

Ed de-camped during The King and I number, and in a moment of passion, bit his own lip. He was so pleased with our progress that we raised the hairs on the back of his neck and he wept tears of joy as he praised our efforts! I can still feel a sense of pride lingering ...

The song will never be over! But once we became happy again, Keeping The Dream Alive was put to bed. It was only revision, anyway!

Right Here Waiting for us to get it right was, Right Here Waiting. We will look at this one again next week, and if it doesn't show signs of recovery, it will be put to sleep, so it won't suffer. It's your choose DFS!

We dug out the original Uptown Girl, and I had a quick scroll through this years blog posts to check which key it was in, man, I love my eye-phone! They didn't pay me to say that BTW. The bum notes were all Ed's this time! We will end with a great, big GIRL because a choir can't really do repeat-to-fade!

Next week meet in the common room, our favourite room! Love you lots xxx

7 November 2013

The one where we did it standing up...The warm-up, that is!

So sorry for the pre-half-term lack of blog, I've brought a note from my mechanic detailing the MOT failure of my car if you would like to see it? Better than a note from your Mum any day.

In notices, we have a Meeting - 7pm Wednesday 13 november Wyke smugglers. We will talk about our tour any many other pressing choir matters. Email Ed if you have anything for the agenda, especially if its wine ...

Downtown abbey's church has accepted us for a concert which is nice! Who needed the actual abbey anyway? The acoustics of churches are much better, as we well know after our years of performing together, now.

Concert imminent - 'Ed Hintze and Friends' performing on 22 November at St Mary's in town at 7.30pm, Only £5 for tickets and its all for charity! Can't wait to try out these acoustics! One of the Friends is going to be out lovely Julie and the other one is me, come along and show your supports ....

Our ocean room 'pavvy' concert is all booked too, my, aren't we popular! Thursday 12 December for that one. Raffle prizes wanted please, hand to Carol, to be collated and basket-ed beautifully.

Groovy kind of love needs to be more choral. We worked on the harmony parts again. In case we forgot them. Then the ending got a bit high!!!! It's going to be a show stopper I think!

Our 'King and I' number got off to a great start. Almost. The original key was then applied with much improvement! We might need more men, but Ed was pleased with our progress, this is surely our magnum opus! Bound to top the aforementioned show stopper ...

'I love it when you call' is definitely in F! We stood for some lessons in pelvic movement! And smiling! But I kept bumping into Daisy and so I think my timing went out. Why is singing and moving together so difficult? I have a feeling that's why Legs And Co were invented....

See you next week DFS, love you long time (well over 5 years in fact). XXXX

17 October 2013

The one with the brand new warm up that lasted rather a long time and ended up in the jungle (breathe now).

In news, Downton abbey are looking rather full, but Blenheim Palace have booked us... Downton abbey might squeeze us in next summer, wait and see!

Keeping the dream alive might still need some arrows, but I used my finger in the interim. Hmmm. You really have to be there to know what I'm on about, don't you? What ever would 'Blog Reader' say?

'I love it when you call' causes us a few problems again when we tried to add in extra letters all of our own. We should have it all! We really do because we are the best choir in Dorset.

We had a listen to Babs singing that King And I number, following the words as we went along, and as the choir joined in all hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I promise it wasn't the thought of Yul Brenners shiny head .... All new to me! But I still just want to sing 'if I loved you' during this song! My bad ...

In the original key we were in the mood for dancing! The YouTube seemed to be sung by a 5 year old Michael Jackson. So key from B down 4. Phew. Then back up 2! The words will have an update.

We finished with a groovy kind of love, them went home to our night caps! Keep singing, and keep listening to our songs on you tube, paying attention to the bit you know you really don't know. Love you, Cat xxx

10 October 2013

The one with the photographer!

The photographer smiled with satisfaction after each shot, zooming here and there and swinging from the rafter to get that perfect composition. And then demonstrated how to navigate Youtube on the big screen in order to facilitate your homework! Thank you Jack. Please remember not to get too excited that you don't change the words! you know how much we are all addicted to staring at them!

We kicked off with uptown girl, key-original again, and some work on some harmonies. And the knows, noz and knooooowz! Ouch!

Ladies only for the start of a song I don't know from the king and I am very sorry for not knowing it. Some parts were very high even for the ladies! And sorry also for attempting to sing 'if I loved you' over the top, and it's performed in the original key. On YouTube look up the Barbra Streisand version (king and I medley)She sings both parts herself. 

We tackled the feeling number, no not the wine one! And it's in the key of F. Vava voom needed! Drop me a line if you like this fun song, 'cause I love it when you call!

Dropping down again (see last blog post - back down a key) we sang 'groovy kind of love' and thought of Jenny. Well I did. But please sing it from the boots everyone, as we need more volume, especially the last chorus! Julie's high harmony is lovely :-) Well done Julie and Ed on the duet, getting to be a habit ...

In other important news, DFS needs an admin and PR body, which could be me if i have a bit of training, and also know how to chat up the folk at The Echo, and at Wessex FM already ... Better offers apply through Ed or Jenny please! Love you, Cat XXXX