It seems I’m on the list for this year’s Brickenden Awards. For those of you not familiar with the Brickendens, they are London’s local independent theatre award committee. Through their award nomination process, the London community is given the opportunity to vote for and recognize the wealth of talent in this city.
I’ve been listed under the best actress category for The Gondoliers and for best supporting actress for The Taming of the Shrew. Now, this is the very beginning of the nomination process, so the lists of candidates under each category is quite extensive and covers pretty much every show that has been produced on any kind of stage in London since January. But still, it is flattering and exciting.
If you’re interested, head over to their site. Voting ends December 28th, so take a look at the candidates and vote. A short list of nominees will be released in January.
The Vox Humana Chamber Choir concert was a huge success. We had an audience, the chapel was gorgeous and the choir has never sounded better. I was really blown away by their sound and the huge change from the rehearsal the night before to the performance. It’s amazing what a wonderful, live and resonant acoustic can do to bring a group together and help take care of those rough edges. Their blend, resonance and phrase shaping was the best it’s ever been, and I suspect much of that had to do with the fact that they were finally in a space that really welcomed their sound.
I am so proud of what we have been able to achieve in this past term. I’m equally proud of myself for what I’ve been able to achieve. I went into this not really having run a choir of this level or size. Every step has been a huge learning step for me and I am so lucky to have so many people round me supporting me, including my accompanist Cheryl Wiseman and my assistant director Anna Chen.
Though, we did have one slight hiccup in the concert. It really was kind of funny. Our final piece was “and the glory of the lord” from Messiah by G.F. Handel. It started out seemingly fine, but then things started to sounds really weird. Something was really off. There were crunching, chromatic and atonal harmonies starting to creep in that I’d never heard in Handel before and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was looking and listening to the choir thinking “Are you off? Are you lost? What’s wrong?”. Things were getting worse and worse, and the looks of confusion and fear where spreading across the faces of the choir as they looked to me with that look that says “FIX IT!” And then our accompanist said “I think I need to start this over.” Turns out, the piece had been started in the wrong key and we were singing “And the Glory of the Lord” in A Flat; our accompanist had been frantically trying to transpose the whole thing down a step as she went. Well, I laughed, she laughed, the choir laughed, I turned to the audience and said “take two!”…they laughed and we started over and ran the piece without a hitch. Thinking back on it, it reminds me of the now infamous “Organist on Crack” . That is almost what it sounded like (well, maybe that’s a bit on an exaggeration…okay, more than a bit). But we shook it off and continued. Really, in those situations, there’s nothing one can do but go on. My thoughts are “these things happen so you might as well laugh about it.”
On a more academic note, over the course of the last few rehearsals and the performance I was also able to record really good material for my graduate school applications with examples of my rehearsals and performances. I decided not to include that particular performance of the Handel.
I can hardly wait for next term. But before then, I have the long task of preparing the repertoire packages again. I’ve got about half the program ready, but am still searching for a few more pieces and tracking down enough legal copies. I remember doing this in the summer and it’s time to do it all over again. But I love it. I really do love it and I hope it’s what I get to do for the rest of my life.
