Barcelona Day 6: Concerts Galore!

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.