Never thought I'd be the type of person to wake up at 8am on a Sunday bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but it's happened. Sundays in Georgetown for rehearsal are fab-o, and we stepped it up a notch today.
Rehearsal itself was a bit sluggish today compared to last week. Our first attempt at running through Act 2 off-book was not as glitch-free as our first attempt at Act 1 -- and most of us had to resort to using scripts. But it was great to get everyone there for Act 2, as we had spent less time on it thus far.
The second part of the day involved a foray to Crane Beach in nearby Ipswich -- my take was that it was nice, but next time I'd just drive a bit farther and go back to Ogunquit/York beach (this was pretty close to Georgetown, in its favor) -- free to park there and fewer folks around. Again, nearly none of us had brought bathing suits, but BNap saved the day by having a car full of dirty laundry -- one piece of which was the t-shirt I'm sporting above, touting the same radio frequency as D's (different cities, though; funny).
Part three of today was great. I was stoked to find out earlier in the week that Mercury Orchestra, a local/community-based group that is quite a bit larger than Calliope, was looking for choristers to accompany the orchestra for Daphnis et Chloe, Ravel's longest piece of music and only ballet (it's short for a ballet, only about an hour). The choral accompaniment is stunning -- and apparently REALLY HARD!
The first cool thing about the whole ordeal is that my name was on a list with a security guard at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, allowing me to enter its under-belly and poke amongst the scattered music stands that are always floating around where there are orchestras. Got a big twinge of .... -- well, something more pleasant than food poisoning -- being in that atmosphere again, the basement of a symphony hall. Felt like a big production and reminded me of singing with the Kokomo Symphony Orchestra as a kid in the KCC -- we would always accompany their biennial rendition of the Nutcracker.
The second cool thing about this schtick is that the conductor is fantastic. Whole different style from what I've become used to -- and it's always nice to start with chorus only before trying to put the whole thing together.
And the coolest thing is that the music and the singers are beautiful -- and we get to perform this beauty in Sanders Hall. This blog -- and this summer -- have turned into a sort of feschrift for the arts, and I like it.
