11 March 2014
Sunny Cincinnati
Emma blogs on a successful return to Cincinnati!
Cathedral of St Peter in Chains
“Today started, well, yesterday. After a less-than-ideal travel day we eventually reached the Garfield suites hotel at 1.15am. After the most welcome night’s sleep of the tour so far, we were treated to a fabulous brunch of bacon, eggs, pastries and fruit salad in Kate and Becky’s suite. It’s great having a kitchen on tour as the thing I miss most is cooking (and it’s also the best way to get value for money!). After eating we took a bit of a busman’s holiday and did some singing! It’s often difficult for the music sub-committee to choose what goes into a new programme if the music in question is unfamiliar, so the best way to see if it will suit our forces is to sing it, and being on tour is an ideal time. In this case we were trying out some music by De Wert for a concert in Antwerp in the summer – he’s not a composer we have any of in our repertoire so this will be a bespoke programme.
Singing through some pieces by De Wert
On this tour, in Andrew’s absence, I’ve taken on the rôle of rehearsal co-ordinator. As well as satisfying my latent bossiness, it’s mainly about trying to work out which pieces need attention. When we’re doing a programme many times in a row it’s easy to either get complacent, or (as we are prone) to go into far too much detail. I often catch myself in concerts thinking more about how to improve the bit we’ve just sung than thinking about what’s coming up! It’s always a relief to get to the last concert of tour, when we feel like we can just relax and enjoy it, warts and all.
After a delicious homemade pasta dinner, courtesy of the cathedral music series festival, the concert went well on the whole (a notable lowlight being when in a reduced-voice piece, neither of the people with perfect pitch were on stage, so we had to guess (not entirely successfully) which key to sing the piece in!), but this was more than made up for by the luxurious acoustic of the cathedral of St Peter-in-chains. There was a lovely post-concert reception laid on by the festival, then we headed to a local bar, where a quick drink turned into several…”
World’s largest chocolate chip? Catering involving ice cream makes everyone happy
Over the next two days we’ll be exploring the American Mid-West as we make our way to Jackson, Mississippi. Looking forward to the concert there on Thursday!