Playing away...

Must post briefly about yesterday's gig with 8+1 in Rothesay. One of the things about singing in a smallish group with no natural base (such as a church choir has, for instance) is that every now and again you want to perform. It's just that - we don't need money for ourselves, as we are perfectly happy to pay for our singing just as we would for any other class, like tap-dancing or mediaeval history; but every performer benefits from having an audience now and again. And what an audience we had on Bute! St Paul's, the wee pisky church on the front that is sister to our Holy Trinity in Dunoon, was packed - we could even see heads in the balcony, which may in fact have belonged to The Local Paper. It's estimated that there were 70 paying customers, plus a few others.

It was, quite simply, a great performance. It had all the tightness of a live event, the rhythm, the excitement. We were singing mostly popular stuff - Gershwin, Sting - with a few Spirituals and a bit of French thrown in - and the audience loved it. We could see flashes as people took photos - the one I've used is courtesy of Rob, biased by his being the other half of a soprano - but some at least belonged to the unattached. I haven't posted a link to a recording made of one song, simply because an iPhone recording, made off-centre, doesn't do this event justice. We had such a ball, and enjoyed every minute.

We've been invited back. I'm dead impressed by the good people of Rothesay - they were knowledgeable and gracious in their enthusiasm. They kept thanking us - I kept telling them we were having fun, and should be thanking them. And the people in St Paul's - they put on a great bunfight. Nothing seemed to be too much bother. It was well worth the journey.

And we have another gig on Friday ...

Gone is that music...

How strange to realise that in the past couple of hours I've heard more Michael Jackson songs than at any other time in my life. I recognise the strange figure of the recent court case against him, and the cheerful child with the prodigious talent and the absurd costumes - so where did the other appearances go? And now, of course, I realise that the cheerfulness on stage was the product of a deprived childhood - deprived of childhood itself.

And in between? All the other stuff that filled my life, I suppose - other music, performing, bringing up a family, teaching, demonstrating, public speaking - and very little room for anything that wasn't my kind of music. But I can remember the effect the star had on the kids I taught - and their amusement at my not knowing why anyone would wear only one glove.

And I suppose what I think of is Elvis, whom I loved from the first movie I was allowed to go to on my own, with friends, without an adult. The movie was King Creole, and I was eleven. I moved on when Elvis changed into the fat freak of the rhinestone suits, but when he died, also too early, I remembered the young singer in denims who first showed my generation what sexy meant. I can still sing all the words of some Elvis numbers, but tonight I realised I couldn't have identified a single song of Michael Jackson's.

Interesting.

Alternative Christmas?

I've been reading Kimberly's take on how ordination changes, among other things, the whole business of Christmas for the ordained. But I'd already been thinking along these lines, for it is not only the ordained who have to fit in the baking, the tree-decoration, the card-writing around other, more pressing activities. In fact, I must have been barely an adult when a totally carefree approach to the season vanished, to be replaced by the situation on which I touched in yesterday's post.

About ten years before I became involved with the church, I started singing in choirs which "did" Christmas. I met Mr B while singing in an a cappella octet which "did", inter alia, Christmas. Christmas occurs in - you've got it - midwinter. The height of the colds/flu/lost voice/wvv season. Suddenly a night out on the town - for in these days I lived in Glasgow - was a dangerous pastime. Who knows what bugs you might meet in a steamy pub? And if you had a duty to the other singers not to let them down ... you get the picture.

And then you find yourself, a singer who likes singing in small groups, married to a singer who is also a church organist. You bear children - and they become choristers. So as well as singing and cooking and being Santa you also end up laundering surplices and ironing ruffs while the organist is away catching his death in the freezing church as he practises or wrestling over an order of service with the incumbent of the day - and, dear reader, we have seen a few of them in our time. The angst is commensurably greater, though you are too busy actually to notice till it's all over.

I've just been chatting to one of our choir from yesterday who is going to her family for Chrismas Day. She won't be cooking, and her daughter-in-law will be doing the domestics. I wondered, fleetingly, if this would ever be our lot. But even as I wondered I knew the answer. For there is a wonderful reward in this church musician caper, in doing your very best to create something beautiful to enhance worship. I don't know what kind of shelf life we have, as singers, but I know full well that my life as Temporary Domestic Goddess will be hugely enriched by the contrast with what has gone before, and right now I can't imagine removing the organist from his home patch over Christmas.

Tomorrow I shall doubtless be laying hay in the manger and rescuing the Holy Family from the big chest in the damp tower, but before that - like now, this minute - I must ice my Christmas cake.