The Lyorn's Den

Of the first 12 days of November I worked five days (1st of November is a public holiday in Bavaria), had five choir practises/rehearsals, and two performances. Apart from that, I slept a lot and read comfort fanfic.

( Rehearsals )
( Performance )

Anyway, that's done, and I won't continue to sing in that choir (despite the joy of "high and loud!"), because my calendar won't take it. I need an occasional weekday evening off.

This week, I actually got some work done, did the laundry, read a book, and pampered the cat (who is well). Next week I'll be off work, and the least stressful part of the family comes to visit.

Friday to Sunday, my long-time choir had a rehearsal weekend in Hammelburg. The small town's claim to fame is being the oldest wine-growing town in Franconia.

( Read more... )

The first day of my vacation (= today) I spent doing nothing. So, that was a good day, too.

Tuesday this week was the yearly outdoor performance of eight small choirs of the city. It's a small event in the park, there's no stage and the seating is beer benches or folding chairs. It's free, and people can just walk in, find a seat or sit on the grass, and listen for as long as they like. Which is nice.

The performers stand with their backs to a 300 year old orangery, singing towards the garden, unplugged, and while it's a lovely place, it's not a great setup for small amateur choirs. The sound just gets lost, and you hardly hear what the person next to you is singing. Plus, if the day has been warm, the evenings are quite damp.

We did OK, but I many of the other choirs were struggling (as they do every year). It's a bit sad.

At least this time it was a cool, dry, windy day, turning to a cool, dry, windy, not-damp evening, which was something. And afterwards we went for pizza.

--

Which completed a week of too much pizza, but that's another story.

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I've been singing in this choir for 23 years come November, and while I generally like it, it forms some habits, and one of the worst is anxiety, which leads to drama. I won't bore you with it, I'm boring more than enough people with it already. It's not grand opera.

So I decided some time ago that I need more music in my life, and Thursday last week I showed up at the rehersal of one of the large (still amateur) choirs in the city. Ceridwen and Gwydion have been members for years and had talked to the orga, so a heap of sheet music (and a bunch of compliments for our performance in the park) was waiting for me when I showed up, and ... goodness. I'm scared.

What we will be performing (in November) is Mendelsson's "Lobgesang", which is a) hard to sing (not difficult musically, but physically), b) long, and c) a bit beyond my comfortable range (which is high mezzo). I'll have to do everyhing right with that one, or it will end in pain.

And something by John Rutter, which spends even more time on Bb5

OK. I wanted a challenge. I can do this (I think), it's going to be interesting, and it's damn beautiful music.

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What I still cannot do well is singing with a micro. I don't know *what* I'm doing wrong, but last band practise ten days ago killed my talking voice for hours. One should think that it'd be easier with a PA system, but it's easier the same way that sailing is easier than swimming, I guess: You have to know how to do it.

Stage fright, as usual, stopped when the audience was in and the lights went on. ( Read more... )

It's amazing how long a busy weekend filled with nice things can feel.

Role playing games

Last weekend, we were playing one of our SF RPGs. ( Read more... )

Music

This Friday, our choir had the most relaxed performance of the year at a village party. ( Read more... )

Other stuff

Saturday morning, it was raining (very good thing). I had some friends over for breakfast (one of them was visiting from the Hamburg area), we talked (mostly about role playing games, as usual), and after breakfast, I met with K__ and mad_freddy in the boulder hall. I feel as if I'm not progressing much (it's always harder than it seems, and my strength does not last as long as I feel it should), but I actually see that I am progressing, as the difficulties are colour-coded, and I have now made first attempts on green (medium easy) and can to most orange (easy).

Of course, in the night, everything hurt and I couldn't sleep. *sigh*

So I went to the pool later today than I should. The rain had stopped and it wasn't quite as empty as it could have been, but OK.

Other than that, I also read a few Silmarillion fanfics, which I might link to in some future posting, and made a chocolate-cherry cake and should write down the recipe... but not right now. I read a lot of kid's comics from the 70s, mostly French ones, and enjoyed it more than I would have expected, and now I'll be off to write a small scene inspired by the comics, about a hellish boat ride which fits just fine into a story that I really should pick up again.

To bad that even a longish weekend ends!

Also: There is a lunar eclipse next Friday early in the night. I need to find a good space to watch it.

Though I cannot blame "not writing" on "travelling"... but just a few notes here, for me to keep track of my life.

Currently I'm on holiday, but at home. Trying to do something about my to-do list, because I barely managed to keep up with the necessities so far.

May 6th to 9th we had a choir weekend in the Bayerische Musikakademie in Alteglofsheim. I did not get lost in the building this time!

May 10th to May 15th I was home because of a family emergency. I did not really plan that. Fortunately, I got time off work on very short (4 workdays) notice.

May 26th to May 29th we were at the choir festival in Stuttgart. It was OK. Hot. Some thunderstorms. A bunch of good and a few very good choirs, but nothing that knocked off my socks. (Maybe the Swingles. But they were kind of in a class of their own.)

Jun 7th to Jun 14 I took the Hurtigruten Boat trip from Kirkenes to Bergen, ( Read more... )

I read Naomi Novik's "Uprooted" (nice, liked it), Perceval Everett's "God's Country" (good, hated it), Catherine Asaro's "Carnelians" (OTT, but fun), and half of Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (very interesting, but I argued a lot with it in the margins).

Other than travelling, we played our on-going SF campaign on May 22nd, ( Read more... )

We had a few performances with the choir( Read more... )

Sunday Jun 5th I held a Kaffeeklatsch ( Read more... )

I'm feeling kind of OK now. As long as I do not think about having to go back to work in a week's time. Maybe I'll write something more about the Norway vacation. But, knowing myself, most likely not.

Yesterday was my choir's end-of-year party, with school holidays starting and our practice room being unavailable until mid-September and everything. It's a potluck, and this year I found that I had two hours between leaving work and arriving at the party, which, considering that about 1 hour of those two will be spent driving, is not a lot of time. (Yes, I know, and I regularly read that other women need 20 minutes to cook dinner, and 3 minutes to get ready in the morning -- let's say, I don't. I need 10 minutes just to cook an egg.)

So, I took liberties with the idea of a tiramisu: ( Strawberry curd cheese cream on cookies )

Party was nice. The recordings from our singing on Sunday had the wind roaring like a freight train, but as far as we could discern, were did not sing out of tune, even though we did have a lot of fuzzy entries. I could not hear myself singing, which surprised me: My pronunciation is so bad that I usually recognize it on the first line.

Yesterday evening I said to Ceridwen, "The usual. I did nothing this week". She remarked that that could not be true. She was right. So, before another week ends up in my mind as "nothing happened" and another year disappears in the "nothing has happened" fog, I'll try to keep at least a short list. Cut for boring.

( Rain )
( Car troubles )
( Choir party )

Sunday Ceridwen came back from a music festival and we had some tea and cake.
And today it looks like there will be another thunderstorm, and I am again driving Ceridwen's car.