CU Chorus Annual Concert

The concert was a successful demonstration of how well an amateur choir can do with scarce resources (as compared with funding/sponsor provided to other choirs). Conductor, accompanists and student/alumni singers all volunteered to take part, for only the experience of performing together in return. Our technics and experience may still be far behind other choirs, but there is certainly passion.

The hall was more than half full and audience responses were surprisingly good. I thought it was overall a mediocre choir performance, but at the end everyone stayed in their seats to make us regret we only prepared 1 encore. We could have entertained them 2-3 more indeed.

Good news is the choir sing most songs in performance no worse than in rehearsals. The sopranos sounded their best while altos were still a bit lacking focus and energy. Audiences shown their appreciation to our tenors in the feedbacks. They deserve the praise for their big leap in sounding recently. As expected there were some complaints on our mandarin; quite hard for us non-natural speakers and part-time singers.

I do think we have the best narrator we could find. Overall atmosphere in Huang He was fine albeit the boys laughed wobbly ugly. Given the small number of rehearsals took place, the orchestra was well on their job. Just hope the 對口唱 was effective, I was still kind of nervous in doing solos.

Singing both choral and solo parts proved to be quite a burden on my vocal cord, particularly after several days' practices and rehearsals. My voice was just dry and coarse in Five Negro Spirituals. Low notes were bare and unrich, plus tightness led by hoarsed voice since I was unable to keep up the volume. Quite not satisfying even to myself. (I could have sung better.) Perhaps a vocalist should learn to preserve his/her resource well, but I just couldn't restrain myself when everyone else was yelling their best in Huang He in performance.

Every soloist did make mistake(s), but as 丁 pointed out, a concert is not interesting if nothing went wrong. Words forgotten when singing with 王老七 (Very fine when you think of Rolando Villazon's wrong entrance in 'Au fond du temple saint'). Missed pitch about twice in Deep River, but I also guess my voice did not come through well as I did not stand near the mic. When we sang solos together, Ｋ's voice near my ear was marvellous. With a well-supported silvery tone, she might be the best soloist tonight.

Kuno took recording. Will I dare to listen?