Ganeida's Knots

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. ~Scott Adams



Our experience of the arts is slightly different to most people's.  For one thing we see it from the inside out more often than we see it from the outside in. This does not impress Star, who likes to have her cake & eat it too. 

Luckily for me I like rehearsals.  I like watching how something is pulled together from nothing.  I enjoy the process of fine tuning to make the spectacular fizz from a lot of glitz & hot air.  I understand the process of building a performance piece by piece & I'm rarely bored. 

Star is a singer so singing is what we experience most of but the singing is often tied in with dance or acting things & it is incredibly hard work, mostly keeping peculiar hours.

So this week we had 2 performances: le fete de la musique & Vocal Manoeuvres Vocal Magnificence ~ which is Alison's company showpiece.  She usually does one of these each year.  This pulls the entire company together in full performance mode, usually sees industry people come for a squizz, & helps everyone in the company get to know each other.  This is great for removing a lot of the awe younger performers hold for more senior performers because everyone has started on the bottom & they can see what hard work will get you. 

 I love these performances.  For one thing these are really high pressure performances because it's *friends* & family.  The families are getting to see what they are paying for; the friends are often industry people~ performers like the ten tenors, members of the Con, or producers etc & the standard is really, really high.  I've seen public performances that are less angst ridden!

Everyone who has read here has heard me whinge ad nasauem about the amount of travelling associated with Star's music:  Boats, cars, peak hour traffic, late nights, obscure venues, Parking ~ or the lack of it ~ Green Room traumas, food & coffee ~ or the abysmal lack of caffeine ~ & the seating!  The seating.  The combination means Dearest, who broke his back, had never seen Star perform ~ until yesterday.  Yesterday I knew the venue had good seating, was within reasonable travelling distance & the performance would be so worth it so I dragged the poor man off his island rock to dance the arty~farty. I can't say Star was overly enthusiastic, especially as somewhere in the audience we had also tucked away her supervising teacher from D.E.

We had front row seats & I have heard this repetoire so often I could sing it myself if I had any ear at all, which I do not, but as I told Alison, sitting in rehearsals year after year may not have done much for my singing but it has completely changed the way I hear music!  I hear subtelties I never used to, I hear individual voices ~ & I know when there's a screw~up!  As some of this was also sung on Tuesday & much of it was a capella it made for an interesting comparison!

So what did they sing?  Well AVAE [Star's ensemble] has been working on Medieval stuff for most of this year & a lot of sacred music: The Swan; the Nightingal; Jesu, Bleibet Meine Freude [yes, they do a lot of foreign language stuff], Bist Du Beir Mir;  Adoramus Te....Exuadi Australis, the senior group, has a fantastic repetoire with things like Sicut Cervus; Rockin' Jerusalem, Didn't my Lord Deliver Daniel?  The Glee singers incorporate dance so the two hours were packed to the ceiling with great entertainment & Dearest came away well satisfied with how his money is being spent.  He loved the whole programme & was delighted to be able to pick out his daughter's voice rock solidly holding her part!  For once Star's ADD was on hold & she was completely focused! Dearest keeps wanting to talk about something else he remembers & enjoyed so I guess next time it won't be so hard to talk him into coming along!

Dearest headed home but Star & I went from the frying pan into the fire & headed out to Liddy's soccer game.  Different coaches & the team was like a completely different team: aggressive, focused, united.  They won 5~0.  Liddy not only scored but most of the goals came off her crosses so she had a really great game.  All in all both my girls had a great day ~ which always makes for a happy mummy, doesn't it?  So how was your weekend?