Salon Concert

Over to Hasunuma last night for our 'salon concert' performance - a chance to try out on an unsuspecting audience some of the stuff we have been rehearsing over the last couple of months with our trip to England in mind. That big full moon - yellow I guess - rising over the rice field stubble out on those wide fields out towards the coast, lovely! And for once we were on time, not just on time but at least six minutes early - how did we do that?

It was a 'salon' too - the main hall in the kindergarten that we rehearse in. We wanted to try out singing in a different setting. Here we always end up on stage, far from the audience, and that won't be the case next year, singing in churches we will be far closer to listeners. Last night plenty turned up to listen too, even through we charged for tickets for the first time ever we had more than seventy and there was standing in the back in the small room. Nice. A responsive audience for Japan as well, they 'sang along' well at the end with 'Silent Night'. But carols were only a small part of the programme.

I felt like the usual 'square peg' as the ladies all rushed around on their allotted tasks. Despite looking for things to help with there was always someone there before me. A few times I found myself thinking "This is why we produced the Beatles and you produced Toyotas" as somebody rushed by with a duster to hurl themselves on another pile of chairs. Japanese capacity for organisation is awesome, we are just such an idle lot back in Blighty.

I think our singing went OK. It is always difficult to judge when you are involved in it and especially when you are at the 'end of the line' and have to rely on the conductor for 'balance'. You try to remember everything that you have been told over the past several weeks but in the end it is a leap into the dark, you need to trust the leader and the other singers. I can see that singing well is in part a case of being able to replicate the same thing time after time accurately, to 'get it right' almost instinctively. But it isn't instinct, it takes a lot of practice.

Afterwards as we all sat around a laden table eating a late supper and talking over the evening that was the point that I took away for myself - that I needed to pay much more attention to 'specifics', getting it right and then just as important remembering what 'right' was. As music isn't a 'concrete particular' - not something than you can see, measure and put in a cupboard somewhere - then the only way you can do that is by working on your senses, remembering accurately what your body was doing and the sound that you made. Needs a lot of work, lucky that we have a good teacher to get us into more good habits.