Bucket List- Choir singing

HAWMC -Day 23 It is a free day to write about whatever I want!

This has been a long month working on this daily blogging challenge and there is still one more week to go! I feel like I am getting a lot out of this process both in terms of learning to be a better writer and in terms of looking at some of my issues in a different way. It has also been interesting to read blogs on the similar topics written by a variety of people with different health concerns.

Anyway... It's a day off from my "homework"!

Yesterday I got to have a mini item from my bucket list come true.

I sang in high school choirs oh so many years ago. I even watch Glee with moments of déjà vu. I (blush) love choirs.

Last year I joined the Scandinavian Choir in my city. I was involved with the Scandinavian Cultural Center years ago when my kids were little and we went to a few events and were involved with the Children’s Dance group, but I personally did not do any performing. Almost 2 years ago I bumped into an old friend from the kids dance group and she invited me to join the choir. It seemed like a good idea, I had just started learning guitar and trying to read music again and this seemed like something else that would be good for me. Bob and I showed up and joined the choir.

Twenty-five or so of us meet at the Cultural Center on Monday nights under the guidance of a professional choral director and we are accompanied by a very fine pianist. We sing English and Scandinavian songs for an hour and a half and then we socialize and have coffee for another half hour. I get to work on my music reading, learning a few words in different languages and I really work hard on my memory skills. I work on singing better and I chat and visit and make new friends.

There is an extraordinary choir in our city called the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir and they planned a performance based on the Theme From the Baltic to the Northern Lights.

Our little coffee drinking group was invited to come and sing along for one song.

I fussed around looking for a costume because we were to dress up "Scandinavian". Most of the rest of the choir members have done many little events and have costumes already and if I am going to keep doing this I will have to work out some kind of better outfit for the future but for the moment I just made it work.

Yesterday was concert day! It is a fairly short song that we have already worked on for our year-end concert. My alto part doesn't have too many Norwegian words and has a lot of oooos and aaaas, so after we had two rehearsals with the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir I was good to go.

Their choir director had a guest conductor working with him for this concert so we had the privilege of being directed by Evgeny Guryev, Dean of the Choral Conducting Department of the Petrozavodsk (Russia) State Conservatory.

The Phil Choir did several pieces and then the time came and we filed up as a new row in front of the choir. I was slow getting to the front of the performance space and I was not happy about singing while standing on a step, but it was all okay.

We were very warmly applauded, but I suspect it had less to do with our performance and was more of a high five for an amateur group having the guts to get up on stage with such a great choir and -- to do it in funny tradition costumes.

Bucket List Item ---

Sing in a really great choir.
I think singing with a really great choir counts.
Check!