At the beginning of this year, the choir that I sing in was thrilled to be invited to take part in a performance of a very popular choral work to be performed with a Proper Symphony Orchestra, their house choir and led by a World Famous Conductor. The concert is tonight at a big venue and I am sure it’s going to be a fantastic occasion.
Anyhow, we’ve been rehearsing for three months, every week with just our choir, accompanied by the piano. It’s been very hard work. The actual parts for this piece aren’t particularly difficult. But it’s a hard sing, very tough on the voice and requires quite a bit of stamina. So we’ve worked hard and we’ve learnt it well.
So yesterday evening we all had to travel about an hour and a half in a big double decker bus to attend the final, compulsory, three-hour rehearsal with the Proper Symphony Orchestra and the World Famous Conductor.
We were about 10 minutes late arriving. It then took ten minutes to get into the building as we all had to sign in. Then all the sopranos and altos had to go to the loo (ratio of 45 ladies to 3 cubicles; go figure). So by the time we were ushered into our seats, the Proper Symphony Orchestra, the World Famous conductor and their own choir were well into the piece we are singing. So we joined in.
The piece finished. The World Famous Conductor went through a couple of entries and asked us to make sure we do a decent crescendo at such and such a bar.
And then he said…….. Thank you chorus, see you tomorrow, that’s it.
I think we sang for 10 minutes.
This is what it is like to be one of the grunts of the musical world.