Today is the big day. Two concerts
and a tour of Sagrada Familia. We got up early and were looking
sharp in our concert dress: Bobby in a tuxedo and I in a long black
dress and black fringed shawl. (The shawls were bought for the girls
after we were all freezing our butts off during the first concert
earlier in the week.) We went straight to Sagrada Familia, which is
a famous church designed by Goudi, who was a very out-of-the-box
thinking architect. The church is still unfinished over a hundred
years after it was begun. The tour guide gave 2026 as an estimated
completion date, a hundred years after the architect's death. While
the original plans for the cathedral were stolen during one of the
world wars, there remained enough notes and sketches for people to
figure out what the architect wanted. There's a miniature church
sitting outside the big one to give people an idea of what it will be
like when it's finished. This is probably where I took the most
pictures, because it was just that amazing.
We arrived on time, but had to wait
outside for like 20 minutes before they let us in, and then of course
after we dropped our bags in a back room and got out onto the main
floor, we started the concert late, without any warm-up or practice
in the space. This was probably our worst concert because it was so
rushed and unorganized. I mean, it was supposed to be a casual
concert, with people walking around touring the church having some
nice background music, and stopping to watch if they wanted, but
still, it just felt so unprofessional for nobody to know what was
going on. The director cut out a piece without telling anyone
beforehand, and then jumped into the next piece before half the
people had their music out. There were no risers in this place, so
when you get 60+ people on a flat floor together to sing, most of
them won't be able to see the conductor, and therefore, entrances,
exits, and dynamic cues will be missed. We really were not at our
peak. However, the people watching didn't seem to notice our
frustrations or lackluster performance, which is fine by me.
A funny thing happened with Bobby
before the concert. We were walking from the dressing room to the
"stage" area (it was really just a roped-off section of
floor in the back), and a French woman walks up to Bobby and says,
"Ganbate, it's Japanese, it means 'be brave' or 'good luck'
before a performance." And Bobby of course answers in Japanese,
"Arigatogosaimasu". I mean, really, of all the performers
to randomly walk up to (and Bobby was the only one she did this to),
she picks the one who's been to Japan several times and speaks a bit
of Japanese to give a Japanese "good luck" greeting
to...because speaking Japanese makes a lot of sense coming from a
French person who's visiting Spain. Only in Europe. These
languages, my goodness! Haha.
Anyway, after the performance, we got
lots of applause and "congratulations" from the crowd, and
headed off to grab cameras from the back room and break into groups
for our guided tours of the church. They handed out headphones that
were all tuned to the frequency of the guide's microphone, and we
walked through the inside, outside front, and outside back of the
church, where the guide pointed out the different statues and
carvings and what they meant. The inside of the church might have
been my favorite part, because Goudi designed it to look like a
forest. The columns were slightly tilted the way trees are, and the
ceiling too looked like a canopy of leaves. The stained glass
windows, instead of having saints and other things in them, were just
bits of color placed so that when the sun shone through, it looked
like the dappled light that comes through the leaves in a forest when
it landed on the "trunks" of the "trees" inside
the church and made the floor look a bit like a forest floor. It was
absolutely beautiful. The carvings on the outside were cool too.
One side was all nature, and realistic people who were carved from
local models at the time Goudi was alive, and the the other side was
more modern and abstracted versions of people and bible stories. The
doors were all covered in bas-relief carvings of holy words in many
languages. It was so beautiful. Unfortunately, we didn't have time
to go up any of the several spiral staircases leading to balconies
and such, nor down to the workshops where things are still being
carved out for the church's exterior decorations, but the tour was
still great.
After, we went to the area of the next
church we were to sing at and had less than an hour to get lunch on
our own. After walking around the block and finding nothing, we
ended up at a Chinese place just across from where we started. We
both got duck, which was in some kind of Spanish sauce. They really
do tailor it to whatever country they're in. Then it was time to go
into the still-cold-but-not-as-bad-as-before-because-it-is-a-warm-day
church for our dress rehearsal (not in concert dress, though, as we'd
changed out of that at the other church after our tours).
Rehearsal seemed a bit frantic to me.
We spent most of the time in formation at the front of the church
going over pieces that were practically perfect anyway. We did
eventually get to the other ones, ran them through once a piece, and
spent some time rehearsing the Catalonian Carol piece that we were
doing with a local choir (the region of Spain that we're in is
Catalonia). This was actually one of our best pieces. This version
of their carol was in English and arranged by an American composer,
and so it was a really nice mixing of the cultures. The conductor of
their choir was really energetic and bubbly. Funny how most of them
didn't speak much English, but we all figured out what Craig was
trying to conduct after a little bit of practice. He still spoke in
English with his directions in rehearsal, but aggrandized his
movements (even more than they already are) to get the message
across. One of the things I really love about music is how universal
it is. Here we are, Americans, singing with a foreign chorus in a
foreign land, us not understanding what they're saying, they not
understanding what they're singing, except from knowing the original
Catalonian piece, and together we produce one unified musical
experience.
After all of this rehearsal and then
sound check, I was beginning to worry over dinner that my voice would
be all sung out, like some people's had already gotten to on the
trip, and just stop working from fatigue. When you sing for more
than six hours in a day for almost a week straight, it takes a toll,
especially if you're not used to it. Your voice can crack, you can't
project as much, pitch can even suffer, and there's nothing you can
physically do about it. I can't think of anything more frustrating
or scary as a singer to just up and happen with no warning in the
middle of singing. Anyway, after rehearsal we walked to a nearby
restaurant for supper. They had the usual bread-and-tomatoes tapas
plus a salad, and the main course was roast beef and vegetables. The
meat was okay, but the veggies were overdone, as they seem to do a
lot here, to the point where I wonder if it's not a coincidence but a
cultural thing. I don't remember what dessert was...cake of some
kind, probably chocolate...maybe mousse? I vaguely recall it being
good, and probably not something they should be feeding us right
before our biggest concert of the trip. Dairy and chocolate are
terrible for the voice right before singing. We did drink a lot of
water, though, probably at least six 1.5 litre bottles at our table
of 8 or 10 (I can't really remember). I do remember Bobby and I
having difficulty finding a place to sit at first, because the table
we went to was commandeered by the important people (conductors, tour
guides, etc.). I also remember that it was three people's birthdays
and they brought out cake with sparklers on them for those people,
and gave one of them to the wrong person. Whoops. Oh well. After
dinner it was time to go back to the church for the concert.
We got ready for the concert, and I
was actually feeling a bit nervous, which is unusual for me before a
concert. I guess it's because despite the hours of singing, I didn't
feel like we were cohesive enough of a group or knew the materials
well enough. Anyway, on to the concert.
The high school group went first.
They were a much smaller group, maybe 10 of them? They messed up a
little bit at first, starting an a cappella piece in the wrong key
and then having to start over, but the conductor lead them through it
like a pro and once they recovered, they sounded quite beautiful.
They did American folk and gospel-ish songs if I recall. The
audience didn't seem to notice the flub at all, probably thinking it
was an intentional artistic break in the music. The Catalonian group
(which had been an active choir for over 100 years) then came on and
did some of their own songs, all in languages I couldn't understand,
some Latin, some what I presume to be Catalonian, some in Welsh, I
believe. It was all quite pretty. Then it was our turn. We did a
few of our American gospel pieces, which sounded great in the space
and the audience really seemed to appreciate. Then, the rest of the
American choirs came up and joined us for the big gala concert group.
First up was a men's piece, Rorate
Coeli, which was very Gregorian chant-like, which led straight into
the traditional hymn, How Brightly Shines the Morning Star, except
that we sang it without words, and the two pieces together sounded
very beautiful. We switched gears from there to Verbum Caro Factum
Est, which is one of those awesome, explosive Latin church choir
pieces, and by far my favorite. Very powerful. We then went into
three of the Lux Aeterna pieces, managing not to fuck any of them up
very badly. I think it was in the middle of this piece, though, that
my voice finally broke. It cracked in the middle of a note, as if to
say, "Nope, too much singing, I give up." For the rest of
the concert, I sang quietly in case my voice cracked again, which
thankfully it didn't, because I didn't want to mess up the rest of
the group. One of my other favorites was up next, The Water of Tyne,
a traditional old English folk song which was about a pair of lovers
who were separated by a river. It's very flowing and soft and
lovely.
After this, the Catalonian choir came
up to sing the Catalonian Carol with us. One could say this was a
major part of why we were here in the first place. Cultural exchange
through music. The piece went over well with the audience and I
think we sounded great together. The other choir left and then it
was on to the finale pieces, American gospels No Mirrors In My Nana's
House and Walk Together Children, with a softer but inspiring song in
between, a choral arrangement of Light of Clear Blue Morning.
When all of our pieces were done, and
our final chord was still resonating through the church, the audience
started their applause, and eventually everyone was standing up and
applauding, and they kept clapping until the last person was off the
stage and out of the main part of the church. It's really touching
how much they appreciated it. As we were walking back up the aisle
on our way out, people were congratulating us earnestly as we passed,
and it felt really good to know that we did a good job. You could
tell the audience was actually moved by this performance, which is
really why we sing as a choir in the first place. It's not about
individual or even group recognition, but the act of bringing joy,
something positive, to complete strangers, through music, that makes
all the tiring hours of rehearsal and frustration worth it.
After people cleared out of the
church, we went back to take some group photos and such. It was
interesting to watch the piano taken apart and moved out of the
church. I figured they must have had to rent the piano for the
non-organ, non-a cappella pieces, but I have never actually seen a
piano taken apart and put into a road box and moved like that, even
in all my years as a stage hand. It was interesting, but probably
only to me. After photos, we all changed into normal clothing and
went back to the hotel for a well-deserved good night's sleep.
