Blog: News and Views

Holiday song

The festival had some, well, festivities planned for the evening of July 4.  They acknowledged that the American choirs had reason to celebrate - but it turns out that this weekend has two Czech Republic national holidays: apparently, July 5 is "Constantin and Methodius Day" (in honour of the first Christian missionaries in the country), and July 6 is "Jan Hus Day" (in honour of the religious reformer).  In any case, we knew we had some fun to look forward to after a long day of singing.

After a very early breakfast, we took the buses into the centre of town; the heavy rains from last night were all but finished, although it was still very overcast and grey.  We started with a "lining-up" rehearsal: it's quite a nontrivial feat of logistics to get 600+ singers on and off stage in the various groups and permutations that the concert that night required.  (Each choir sang one song on its own; the treble boys choir had some mass numbers together, as did the young men's choir and also the full men's choir; and the entire ensemble, together with several instrumentalists, combined at the end.)  It's no secret that everybody, including the organizers, finds these lining-up rehearsals annoying - but there were plenty of things learned which I was glad didn't go wrong during the concert itself.  We had to do all of this lining up inside, since the open field behind the venue was muddy and soaked from the night before.

We then rehearsed the three-movement mass piece with the instruments and the composer, Jaroslav Krcek, conducting.  He worked us hard, especially to get the entrances crisp (not easy when we're trying to read and remember foreign words!); but he had a very easy-to-follow conducting style, and his energy and love of the music got us through it.

Hurriedly we took the buses back to the dorm, ate lunch, and bussed back (some lions opted for convenient lunch over free lunch - a frequent decision we needed to make).  The "smaller" mass choirs quickly rehearsed their pieces with various conductors, including Robert Sund and Diane herself, and we ran through the Krcek piece one time from start to finish.  Then the choirs ran around to do their individual sound checks in the hall - twelve choirs with three minutes each!  Finally we had a short break as they let the audience fill the ultimately packed house for the start of the concert.

The concert went extremely well!  Chor Leoni rocked the house with a heroic-sounding rendition of a classic, "To Beer", from the Czech opera "The Bartered Bride".  We rested backstage before joining the young men for a few songs to end the first half of the show; then we spent more time backstage before coming out for the last half hour of the concert.  The full TTBB choir sang "Incantatio" under Diane's direction (you fans will remember the incredible storm soundscape from our LOVE concert this spring) and some Czech pieces under Robert Sund.  Then all 600 of us sang with Krcek and the instruments, and we finished with a rendition of "Goin' Home" (strange to sing an arrangement different from Diane's!).

After the concert, the weather was thankfully nice, as we walked along the river a bit to arrive at a huge picnic!  There was enough food (and nearly enough beer) for everyone involved with the festival; an American choir sang "The Star Spangled Banner" while waiting in line for burgers, and later Chor Leoni answered with Diane's arrangement of the Czech national anthem.  The only downside of the recent rains was that the fireworks they had planned for us had to be cancelled due to still-wet conditions.  But that just left more time for lions to go have fun on their own that night!

Posted by Greg Martin on July 7, 2008 at 7:43 AM
Filed in: Tour Diaries | Permanent Link

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