Wanderung 26

Bob:

Stress affects different people differently. Although having a Pop Choir performance rehearsal in the morning and final performance in the afternoon wasn't really all that stressful in the larger scheme of things, I coped with the residual nervousness by napping in our cabin before, between, and after each of those sessions.

The performance itself went off well, at least from my point of view (Monika was less happy about her performance). My care in singing pianissimo the previous day and at the morning rehearsal paid off in that I was able to sing full-voice throughout the entire performance without getting too hoarse or cramping up my throat muscles. I tried to put particular emphasis into the phrases where the tenor section was supposed to be carrying some high-pitched harmony lines as Rose really had designed some beautiful harmonies, and they deserved to be heard.

On one number, however, a subset of the choir suddenly started to sing the second verse when I thought we should be repeating the chorus, so I just shut up for a couple seconds to make sure I was doing the right thing and then proceeded to join a small group of other people who were persisting in singing the chorus. The choir quickly re-grouped at the correct place in the song, however, so little damage was done. Although we did not get a "standing ovation" at the end, at least we did not get a "leaving ovation" that one comedian had joked was a specialty of the audiences on the Sea Princess!

Rose Winters was a truly excellent conductor, the best I have encountered in my admittedly limited experience with choirs. She used hand signals at varying levels to help us hit pitch changes correctly as well as having very distinct and emphatic "start" and "stop" gestures that helped keep us singing in unison. She did that while continuously miming the words with her expressive face in such an exagerrated fashion that I could clearly lip-read what she was telling us to sing, despite the fact that I was 10 yards away in the back row on stage. Her exaggerated miming may sound over-the-top, but let me tell you it really helped all of us sing the right words at the right times, particularly in the two-part harmony sections. After the performance, we later received several nice complements on how good the choir had sounded, and my only regret was that I did not have a chance to relay those compliments back to Rose. So in case she ever reads this, "Good job, Rose!".