Saturday, 25th March 2023

Saturday, 25th March 2023 was the fourth and final Saturday rehearsal before our concert on 29th April. The hall was packed, with everyone eager to start singing and looking to our conductor, Andrew Padmore, to enthuse them.

Andrew cajoled the sopranos into reaching their top notes by improving their mouth shape and their pronunciation of vowels. He was keen to remind the altos to make sure that they did not lose the pitch of repeated notes and gave them encouragement when they had a melody to sing! Throughout the day, he encouraged the tenors and basses to sing legato through the phrases and reminded us all to look ahead and move the music on.

There were several sections that Andrew asked us to sing without copies and the result was we were more together in our timing and the quality of sound improved because we were looking at him instead of burying our heads in our copies. He talked repeatedly of how we had to give a performance not just with our singing but with our faces too. If we look interested in what we are singing and it shows in our faces and the way we stand, the audience will be interested and enjoy our performance.

Andrew was very pleased with the whole day’s rehearsal and praised us for our development, saying we had come a long way since September 2022 with our singing technique and in the sound we were producing. He is very excited about the concert and we are now ready for the Big Sing in the Cathedral!