gorgeous on the inside

This weekend my church choir got together with choirs from three other local churches and had a little concert. The performance was Sunday afternoon (the music directors learned from last year's mistake and did not schedule it on the day of the Superbowl), and it went pretty well. They're church choirs, which means there are some tone-deaf people, but on the whole we acquitted ourselves quite well.

At the rehearsal on Saturday, one woman appointed herself guardian of all things right and sopranoey. She pointed out that the choir directors ought to stand on a little platform because otherwise no one could see them behind the first row when we were sitting down (I'd like to say we were sitting down for the old people but my feet hurt, too). This was a good point and it needed to be made, but I think the choir directors got it after the first five or six times she yelled at them. I mean, if the guy steps off the platform for a second to deal with a problem, you can assume he's going to get back on. Especially since he can't see his music unless he's up there.

Then there was this one part in the Eric Whitacre piece "Water Night" where the second sopranos were singing an A below middle C. This is really low for sopranos, but we are physically capable of doing it, and it was super-quiet. Whitacre is really good at writing for voice. She was already complaining about how low the soprano part was, but then my choir director made the mistake of asking for the seconds to bring out their note a little more and she got all snarly: "How are sopranos supposed to do that? We're growling down there! How can you ask for more?" (He polled the seconds and they were all fine with that note.)

Best thing? She wasn't overly attractive, which I wouldn't normally note except that she was attempting to own it by wearing a t-shirt that said "Gorgeous on the Inside." Which...I think was a lie.