Sunday, December 21, 2008

Battle of the choirs

We had "choirfest" tonight for our stake (church). My friend Wendy and her husband call it "battle of the choirs" . Jeff says it's a festival for people who like to make a big production. I enjoyed it. The thing about Mapleton church choirs, is the Mapleton Chorale.

Just about half of every ward choir has sung in or sings in Mapleton Chorale. It's a non-audition volunteer choir for the area, that really sings at a near professional level. Translation: if you don't sing so well, you'll be driven out before too long. I did it a couple of years ago, and honestly, couldn't handle the pressure. It was a major time commitment, and even when I was singing well, I never felt OK, because I would know the person next to me or the person behind me was screwing up, and we'd hear "SOPRANOS ARE FLAT!". Not so fulfilling. When people aplauded at the end of a concert, I'd feel like they were aplauding the director. I never felt like I had a part of the praise, just the criticism. It's my diva background I guess. I need some glory.

On my mother's side it seems like all my cousins are singers. Really, two have recorded professionally, and at least two others have sung professionally live on stage, and I'm probably forgetting someone. You should have heard all of us singing at my grandparents' funerals. Those poor microphones --battle of the Divas (except for me. I would NEVER do something like that :) ). I should link to some web pages that have them on it. Let's see.. here's an article on Erica., here's Stacey (I can't find where she was on stage, but she's got a major blog now), here's Nicole (it's a song she's done), I can't find Natalie. Dang. She's in some girls band.

But yeah the battle of the choirs tonight was nice. Really good sounds from almost all of them, and we didn't mess up either which was comforting. We had a major goof-up during the sacrament program. I guess you had to be there.

4 comments:

Kira said...

That is a fond memory for me, belting it out with the cousins at the funeral. Do you think Granny would have wanted any less?!? Can't you hear her even now, "aren't they all wonderful? My grandchildren are all such extraordinary people". No one ever thought we were quite as great as our Grandma, I sure miss that, everyone needs someone that thinks you do no wrong.
P.S. I think Natalies group is Jada or something like that. We suck that we don't know off hand. She is due on Thursday (Christmas) so I think she has switched to lulabies for now.

Deja said...

You should have heard the Christmas program in Tucson. They must have had THIRTY songs on the program. They all sounded the same: terrible. I was not sorry Sam was scheduled to pick me up before they were quite done.

I do like to think of Grandma's funeral, when we all diva'd it up.

Kelli said...

I was at sacrament meeting. I don't know what you are talking about. But, then again, I was dealing with Cole so I was only "half there".
I thought Bro. Taylor was awesome on the piano. Rick told him how well he did and Bro. T said that Rick must not have heard all of the wrong notes because there were a lot. We are musically challenged and didn't know the difference.

belann said...

Here's Natalie's web link. The band is Taja.
http://www.tajamusic.net/

Hansen/Earley girls Divas for sure.