Singing at The Coliseum

This weekend was the culmination of the 2006 Baylis project at the London Coliseum, home of English National Opera. Valentines Singers were amongst about a dozen choirs from all over the country taking part. It was a bit like a grown up version of the Borough music festival, we all rehearsed in our home choirs, then got together last weekend to rehearse as a full choir. Yesterday we spent all morning on the technical rehearsal which was basically about how to manouvre 12 choirs/ 500 people all around the crowded backstage coridoors of the Coliseum without mishap! I loved the Coliseum itself, amazingly ornate and intimate, rather like a Victorian aunt's front room on a huge scale and I found going round the back through twisting coridoors and back stage spaces fascinating. Eg why are there 20 giant Christmas Trees in mid summer (pretending to be a forest in 'King Arthur' apparently!)

In the first half each choir got about 7 minutes on stage to do their own thing, We sang 'Sweet and low' (soothing setting of Tennyson-rather risky on a hot Sunday afternoon!) and my current favourite 'Fa Una Canzona' (wonderful/impossible 16th century Italian Madrigal)

Waldorf Singers- Fa Una Canzona

(We sing it better- plus doing 2 more verses...)

Being on stage singing was more nerve wracking than I expected, especially as I ended up front row centre stage about 2 feet from our fierce conductor!

In the second half all 500 of us got together to sing a specially commissioned piece called genesis, all very modern tone poem type stuff which I loathed at first and then came to really love. We start off singing about 'nothing', then a wierd section which is all about 'ripples' then a wonderful jolly chant in 8 parts about 'join the bones together' then all of a sudden all the chords come together for 'earth embrace us, heavens embrace us'. It hadn't really made sense in earlier rehearsals but the first time we did it all through as a massed choir we got to that bit the sound was so overwhelming I just started crying.

How does music speak to our hearts so strongly? How can it make us feel without words?