Poscimur

So, I joined a choir here in the UK. It's quite a unique choir in that they subsitute for cathedral choirs all over the country. Only a small group of people in London rehearse on a regular basis and the full choir only rehearses together at the venue on the day of the event. My "debut" was this past weekend (the bank holiday weekend) at Ely Cathedral. Magnus and I went together, but I'm afraid it was a bit of a bore for Magnus. The weather was dreadful (cold and rainy) and I was either in rehearsal or singing in a service most of Saturday and Sunday. But the cathedral is gorgeous and the singing was good. The town of Ely is also quite cute, but I didn't get to see much of it. We had a great meal at the Boathouse along the river but due to the weather we couldn't sit outside which would've been much nicer. Unfortunately, there wasn't much time outside of rehearsal and singing to get to know the other choristers. But that will come with time. The one exception was Paul, who sings alto, who was great fun and knows a ton about Early Music. In fact, he studied Medieval Latin with Peter Dronke at Cambridge, who was one of Sequentia's foremost consultants and translator.

The choir sang Evensong on Saturday, Eucharist and another Evensong on Sunday, so it was quite a marathon. Good for me though! We sang a number of things unfamiliar to me. Only the Gibbons Short service was something I had sung before.

My next gig with them will be in Tewkesbury (in Gloucestershire) and I'll be singing the duet from Mendelssohn's "I waited for the Lord" with one of the other sopranos and the choir.

Elysium in Berlin

Elysium just finished its second performance stint in Berlin. We sang the program "Know Thyself" to great success. We performed at the Domäne Dahlem, which is a farm/museum actually. We performed in the Herrenhaus, the museum part of the complex. We were surrounded by ancient coffee makers and portable cook sets and the like. We were able to use the furniture from the cafe to create a living room-like atmosphere next to a fireplace. it was really cute! On Sunday we sang in the Osterkirche (Easter Church) in Wedding. Also, an interesting atmosphere with the fabulous accoustics of a romanesque church. The Osterkirche had requested an intermission, which we weren't accustomed to doing in this program, so we rearranged the sets, added some material and generally tweaked the program. It turned out to be a blessing, as the program really benefitted from the changes. It gets better every time we do it! We made a recording and a video, so hopefully there will be some material from that we can use for promotions.