We’re all right
“Make sure you get the pronunciation right,” quipped the brass player in front of me. Ha, ha, dude. (There are no words in the vile Ravel, only syllables, and those only because our conductor put consonants in so that the fast sections have individual notes instead of sounding like big microtonal melismas.)
“Oh, absolutely vital,” agreed the next chair. “We expect no less than perfect French.”
“We’ve sung Elvish,” deadpanned the alto next to me. “We can do anything!” Zing.
We actually, remarkably, managed not to suck. The first run-through of the 3/4 section lost a few of us (mostly because it was a tad slower than we were expecting), but we got our act together the second time, and the symphony conductor seemed perfectly content with us. We got in and out of there in a zippy thirty-five minutes, which for a twenty-minute piece is pretty good (considering some time got spent on orchestra tuning and talk).
Should be a good gig. Though this standing-on-the-front-row business is for the birds. I’ve been a back-bencher all my singing life, being elephant-sized and all, but our chorus doesn’t arrange people by size. So I’m stuck on the front row, huge and appallingly conspicuous and right behind a brass section that’s so bloody loud I can’t hear myself think, much less sing.
Even so, though, it’ll be a good gig. Come and see it. Tomorrow night, GMU Center for the Arts, 8 pm. I’ll be the elephant in the front row.