musical odds and ends

Not too much to report from the last couple of days. The pain in my neck let up long enough to give the floors downstairs a good scrubbing. This resulted in having an almighty headache for the rest of the day, but at least it's done.

I've also been traveling to Troyes a lot for choir rehearsals. I haven't been in forever. For two weeks running in December, the director was sick and cancelled rehearsals, and then the next week I didn't go because I misread the schedule and thought it was only soloists. Then we had Christmas vacation and then last week I had "la gastro" so I guess it really has been over a month since I made it to rehearsal. So, like a good little choir girl, I absconded with the car Tuesday afternoon so I could go to the conservatory and sit in a little room with a piano and reacquaint myself with the repetoire. I'm glad I did because I'd forgotten that we are singing so much German this year and I find German to be extremely difficult to sing - Brahms is lovely but too many "ichs" and "achs" for my liking, and German just does not fall trippingly off this tongue.

Then Thursday the director asked me to learn an additional piece which is being sung by a smaller group that was going to be rehearsed last night, so I went to the conservatory early to take a look at it. For some strange reason the director likes to pretend I'm a soprano and assigned me to sing the "canto," or second soprano, which has me screeching all over the place. Meanwhile, Steph's niece, who is singing this piece too, prefers to sing soprano but is stuck in the alto section. There just isn't any justice, I tells ya.

This weekend, we'll be participating in the national director's exams, where choir director candidates will direct us in front of a jury. I hate giving up my weekend mornings for this, as that's precious Me & Steph time, but I am curious to see how it's going to go down. My sister-in-law told me that she's already participated in one, and had one director who was really awful and managed to pass her exam, and is currently directing a choir and is still awful. That's a bit shocking, considering the high caliber of directors I've encountered since I've been here, so I confess that I'm looking forward to what kind of future directors show up this weekend.