"Let us entertain you"

I am currently sat waiting to go out and brave the cold to walk down to my local church, St. Paul's Spennymoor, for the final rehearsal of Sunday's fundraising concert. It's going to be quite a relief to sing something a bit more lighthearted than what my audition rep and St Matthew preparations have afforded me over the past term. In addition to some fun choral pieces I'll be getting out an old favourite of mine - "Someone is sending me flowers" - which I'm surprised I haven't had occasion to sing in the church before but I'm sure everyone will enjoy. It's always nice to come back to a piece you have sung time and time again with great success, like snuggling in to a blanket in some ways, so very relaxing and comforting.

It's always a lot of fun singing with the church choir. I have sang with them for about 11 years now and they have always been a great support. Performing in such a low pressure and friendly environment always brings me a nice reminder of why I am singing and how I came to sing in the first place. Unfortunately it seems that less and less I am able to sing with them these days because of clashing events but they always warmly welcome me back and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again.

For this particular concert we will be joining with singers from Whitworth Church whom we often team up with when we want to augment the choir and some of whom were with us when we invited churches from across Spennymoor to join us in recording a CD with last year. I'm excited to hear what we sound like as a whole as this will be the first time I hear this particular mix of people all joined together. Hopefully the event will be a lot of fun for everyone who attends!

More details about the event can be found here.

Photo from the CD launch

Auditioning

As a young singer a lot of the concerts and events I have sang at have been ones which I was invited to through people who have either heard me sing previously or whom have had me recommended to them, so when it comes to auditioning it is quite an alien experience - up to now there have been very few things which I have gone through a formal audition process for. In fact, right now, I can only think of three: Weekend School, Samling, and as of Monday this week, Music College. Thankfully this week's audition was a very positive experience with good feedback and I'm hopeful that I will be offered a place, but I still have some time to wait before I hear anything.

The audition day itself felt rather long as there were three panels and an academic interview, but perhaps it is good to get so many opportunities to perform in an audition setting - it is certainly a completely different skill to performing for a large audience, and I'm sure this period of auditioning will create a solid foundation of experience to help calm me in future auditions.

In the mean time I still have four more left to go, one in Manchester and three in London. I'm looking forward to meeting up with old friends who are at various universities (one three years younger but already there before me - ah, the patience needed to study singing), and now that the first audition is out of the way I am, if I dare I say it, looking forward to the rest!