Albury
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 July 2005 07:08:15
On Saturday morning I got a lift down to Albury with the accompanist, a very eccentric person who managed to sing and talk his way through at least 97% of the conversation on our 4 hour trip. I didn't mind though, at least we didn't have any awkward silences. We arrived in Albury at about 1.30pm after a trip via the Junee Licorice Factory (I bought chocolate coated almonds - absolutely divine).
I checked in with my roommate (the soprano soloist) and we did a bit of shopping around the town and grabbed some lunch before the rehearsal at 4pm. This went quite well but the Church was rather cold and the time delay between the organ loft and the front of the church where the singers were some difficulties that had to be overcome.
This is a picture of the church during the combined choir rehearsal:
We then had a light dinner of soup and bread which was provided by the church and went to our motel located directly across the road to get ready. Here I am just about to step out the door to the performance (it's not a brilliant photo but you get the gist of what I was wearing):
The concert was great and the church was absolutely packed with people. I had two 'moments' which were both not really in my control. I had a 'frog' in my throat during a solo line which I cleared and kept going (the only thing I could do really) and the other was when the choir had dropped almost a third in pitch during an unaccompanied section I had trouble pitching my notes for the solos (mostly because I had practised so much that I had note recognition and couldn't adapt to a lower key).
After the concert the soloists went out to get something to eat and then made it to bed just after midnight.
We were then off at about 10.30am for the wineries around Rutherglen. Our car did this via Beechworth, a beautiful historic town in the mountains of Victoria. I bought my boyfriend an alpaca scarf which is very warm and soft.
We had a quick lunch before making our way to the winery where we were to have our performance:
This was a much better concert for me although I had more problems pitching notes when the choir, once again, had terrible pitch problems. I was annoyed at myself for those couple of things but I guess it's just something I have to learn to cope with in the future. I should stop being so hard on myself though and be very happy though that the other 3 pieces went really well and I only had a slight problem in one small section of a larger work.
It was a wonderful experience to have gone through and I hope there are many more to come.