Vivat Libertas

Since completing my Grade 8 in singing with an embarrassingly high mark (for me anyway), a lot of things have come my way. I've sung with a couple of choirs outside of school, been paid token amounts for my efforts (hey, money is money), and somehow weaselled my way into a choir of semi-professional real ale drinkers  musicians. And on top of that, I'm looking for paid choral work in Manchester - so if anyone needs a soprano, kindly drop me a line. (Seriously. I'm a student. It's a foregone conclusion that I'm broke - but fortunately surviving off more than just noodles and ramen because I know how to cook.) And  I want to continue and maybe do diplomas and such. Anyway, sometime in late August I went up to St Albans to sing with one of the choirs that my former music teacher helps run, which was pretty fun (if exhausting) and I met a lot of nice people...and we got asked, at more or less the last minute, to sing at a wedding. Now, I don't really mind doing ...

Have I mentioned that I really don't like children's choirs? Probably not, but here's an entire blog post dedicated to griping about them! It's odd, because from what I can gather quite a lot of people do  like children's choirs; they like to hear the little angels singing, to be a bit patronising and snarky about it. They like to hear the sound of innocence, I think - at least, that's what I would say if I wanted to sound pseudointellectual. You know what? I'll be perfectly honest: I don't know how people can stand children singing, let alone listen to them for fun! Does anyone mind enlightening me on this? I don't think it's necessarily technical proficiency, since some children aren't that good. I'm getting off the subject here, though...I've never really liked to hear children sing, as their voices are still immature; even the best child singers have a thinner tone compared with mature adult singers. (Incidentally, that's ...

And I didn't even get a lousy T-shirt! Just joking. It was actually an awesome day - we (the Really Big Chorus ) rehearsed and sang bits of The Peacemakers by Karl Jenkins , then (eee!) went and recorded it, conducted by the man himself! The pieces we did are musically quite simple - not much range - but oh my god they're so slow  - it was like a breath-holding contest, because at points it's almost impossible to do it all without taking a breath. I'm not bad at breathing, but this took the cake! Still, rehearsing was fun and the chords were amazing . Singing is much harder work than it looks, by the way - loads of effort had to be put into the pieces. Initially I was nervous because I'm 15 (not 16 or 18) and wondered if I might be kicked out, but nobody commented on my age - in fact, there were a couple of girls who looked about my age or younger - and I was even complimented on my singing! These people came from all over the country (and I even saw one sopra...